For more than seven years, Australia’s policy has been clear: People who seek asylum by boat will never be settled in the country; they will be sent offshore and have their asylum claims heard there.
Between the declaration of that policy by then-Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd on July 19, 2013, and the last transfer offshore in December 2014, Australia sent 3,127 people seeking protection as refugees to Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Manus Island.
An analysis by the Guardian Australia reveals that almost half — 47 percent — remain in limbo. Most of those — 86.7 percent — have been recognized as refugees.
Illustration: June Hsu
Those numbers represent not only a human story of struggle and endurance, but a significant policy challenge for the Australian government, which sent them offshore without a feasible plan to resolve their cases.
“It shows clearly that they didn’t have a plan when they went into this and certainly not a plan for what to do with the human beings who are going to be trapped up in their system,” Amnesty International refugee coordinator Graham Thom said. “Ultimately, that’s why, seven-and-a-half years later, we’re still left with 1,500 people in a range of bizarre and cruel forms of limbo.”
WHERE THEY ARE
Despite the government’s claim that it has worked day and night to get people off Nauru and Manus Island, 290 people as of October remained offshore — the last time for which official data were available.
The numbers were evenly split between Manus Island and Nauru — 145 on each.
They had been in developing countries, initially in detention camps, for at least six years in the case of Nauru, and at least five-and-a-half years on Manus Island.
More than 1,000 people are in Australia after being evacuated for medical treatment, or to accompany a sick family member or friend.
Hundreds remain locked up in hotels and detention centers — many for more than one year. Others have been released into the community on strict conditions.
Although many have put down roots in their communities, the government has said that they can be returned to Nauru or Manus Island at any time. They are not allowed to apply for any visas — including temporary protection visas.
Some are in community detention — a controlled release from detention which limits travel, allows no work rights and has other restrictions, but in which accommodation is provided.
Increasingly, this group is being pushed from community detention on to final departure bridging visas with work rights, but no support. The visas allow refugees to work, but deny most of them any support if they cannot get a job.
The result is that many risk destitution and homelessness, community organizations have said.
The Australian Department of Home Affairs has said that refugees and asylum seekers sent to Nauru and Manus Island have permanent migration options: They can resettle in the US or another third country, settle in PNG, or voluntarily return home or to another country in which they have the right of entry.
This is “absolute nonsense,” Thom said.
“They are refugees, so they can’t go home,” he said. “Nobody is being sent back [offshore], whether they want to go or not. And the only third-country option available at the moment is the US, and not everybody is able to go to the US.”
THE RATIONALE
The justification for the harsh treatment of these 3,127 people has always been deterrence.
The offshore policy and exclusion from Australia was one plank in the government’s attempts to stop the flow of boats carrying asylum seekers that arrived in Australian waters in increasingly dramatic numbers throughout 2012, leading to hundreds of drownings.
However, long after the boats stopped coming in 2013 and 2014, Australia has failed to solve its self-created problem of what to do with those who were sent offshore.
The government’s attempts to deal with the caseload for the first few years of Rudd’s policy were halting.
The government of then-Australian prime minister Tony Abbott struck a US$55 million deal with Cambodia to offer settlement to refugees sent offshore, but only seven took up the offer and only one remains.
A vital deal happened in 2016, when then-Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a deal with the administration of then-US president Barack Obama to resettle up to 1,200 refugees. Despite US President Donald Trump’s opposition to the deal, he agreed to honor it.
Four years later, that deal is waning, with Australian officials saying that April next year is likely to be the end. It has led to 870 people — a bit less than one-quarter of those sent offshore — being resettled.
About 260 more people have provisional approval to go — 20 from Manus Island, 30 from Nauru and 220 from Australia.
That leaves hundreds of refugees without a clear future.
Since 2013, New Zealand has offered to take 150 refugees each year from the regional processing cohort.
The Australian government has never accepted the offer, but has said that it might do so eventually.
The office of Australian Department of Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said that under the previous government, 50,000 “illegal maritime arrivals” arrived on more than 800 boats and more than 8,000 children were detained.
“The Coalition government, under Operation Sovereign Borders, has taken back control of our border from the people smugglers and removed all of Labor’s [‘illegal maritime arrival’] children from detention and gotten all the children off PNG and Nauru,” the office said.
“The government’s policy is clear: No one who attempts illegal maritime travel to Australia will be settled here,” it added.
SANCTUARY ELSEWHERE
Despite the government’s repeated insistence over the years that it is investigating other third-country options, none has eventuated.
More than 20 people have used creative methods to find resettlement opportunities without the government’s help. Most famously, Iranian writer Behrouz Boochani last year escaped to New Zealand. Another prominent voice, Abdul Aziz Muhamat, sought asylum in Switzerland, after flying there to receive a human rights award.
At least 11 people have gone to Canada, either through private resettlement or with the help of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Recently, the UNHCR intervened to help people resettle in European countries that are already dealing with refugee inflows — such as Norway, Finland and France.
In all, 900 people have been resettled — 28.8 percent of those sent offshore.
Despite being desperate enough to embark on a risky sea voyage to make it to Australia, about 800 people have chosen to return to their home countries, including Syria, Afghanistan and Myanmar.
Most chose to leave offshore detention in 2014 when it became apparent that claims were not going to be resolved quickly and the conditions became too harsh for many.
At least 20 were forcibly deported to their home countries by PNG after their refugee claims failed.
BIRTHS AND DEATHS
Thirteen people have died. One was murdered. At least three killed themselves. A coroner found that one refugee had died of septic shock, which could have been prevented after the refugee experienced a small cut on his leg.
More than 170 babies have been born in the seven years, inheriting their parents’ temporary status. That figure, from February last year, is probably much higher now.
More than 2,000 people who arrived in Australia by boat after July 19, 2013, were never sent offshore and are not subject to the strict ban, but the government has never offered justification or explanation for the differential treatment.
UNENDING UNCERTAINTY
Over the past seven years, much attention has been paid to the harsh conditions of offshore processing — including accusations of child abuse and rape, a riot, violence, poor medical treatment and family separations.
For those 1,500 people who remain in limbo, experts have said that the length of the wait and the uncertainty they live with is its own form of agony.
University of South Australia professor Nicholas Procter, a mental health expert, uses the term “lethal hopelessness” to describe what refugees without permanent visa status endure.
He describes it as two big brick walls on either side of refugees: One represents the country they fled and the other represents the inflexibility of their temporary status.
“They can’t go forward and they can’t go back,” he said.
To put people in this situation is “very alarming,” Procter said, adding that the uncertainty that they experience is “unendurable, it’s insurmountable.”
The feeling of being boxed in only increases over time: “You just can’t turn it off like a tap — the uncertainty is always there.”
The only solution is a change in government policy, Procter said.
Visa insecurity is “uniquely associated” with mental health problems, said Angela Nickerson, head of the University of New South Wales’ refugee trauma and recovery program.
Her team’s major study of refugee mental health suggests that refugees with insecure visas have more PTSD, more depression and more suicidal intent than other refugees.
Visa insecurity is “not just associated with psychological symptoms, but actually that intent to take one’s own life,” she said. “For all our participants, the longer they have been in Australia, the more severe their PTSD symptoms, the more severe their depression symptoms.”
THOSE RESPONSIBLE
The Australian Liberal-National Coalition, or the Coalition, is an alliance of the country’s center-right political parties, while its main opposition is the Australian Labor Party.
Responsibility for the seven-year wait lies with the highest reaches of the Coalition government. The man who oversaw one of the harshest periods of offshore processing in the first year of the Coalition government was then-Australian minister for immigration Scott Morrison, who is now prime minister.
In December 2014, Dutton took over as minister for immigration and since 2017 has held the position of home affairs minister.
However, the treatment of these refugees is not often the subject of mainstream political debate.
It was a Labor prime minister who announced they would never be settled in Australia — although Rudd has since called for the government to resettle those still held offshore in New Zealand, Australia or another third country.
“I think if the Australian government was sensible, it would bite the bullet and allow the people who are in Australia to stay,” Thom said, describing it as the most obvious solution, especially given the halt to migration caused by COVID-19. “But given Australia has a policy of never allowing these people to stay permanently, then it has to accept other offers that are being made in good faith, like the New Zealand offer.”
The Department of Home Affairs said that Australia remains committed to its regional processing policy and is establishing permanent regional processing capability in Nauru.
“The Australian government’s policy remains steadfast: No one under regional processing arrangements will be settled in Australia,” it said.
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