Wed, Aug 28, 2019 page5

• Australian visa system ‘broken’

  ‘BLACK ECONOMY’: Experts said organized crime groups have been exploiting the system for human trafficking, citing a surge in asylum applications by airplane arrivals

  • The Guardian
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  Criminal syndicates are using Australia’s “broken” visa system for human trafficking that is leading to the exploitation of foreign workers who are being paid as little as A$4 (US$2.70) an hour, an immigration roundtable in Canberra has heard.

  The Australian Labor Party called the meeting of migration and border security experts as it seeks to turn up the heat on the Liberal-National Coalition over its management of the visa system, pointing to 80,000 people who have arrived by airplane to claim asylum since 2014.

  Only about 10 percent have been found to be refugees, but the surge in claims means a backlog in processing that has left more than 200,000 people in the community on bridging visas who are vulnerable to exploitation.

  The roundtable, convened by Labor’s home affairs shadow minister, Kristina Keneally, heard from John Coyne, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s head of border security, who warned that the visa system was being exploited.

  “Organized crime [groups] are indeed facilitating unlawful migration on a fee-for-service basis, using methodologies from fake identity documents to gaming Australia’s visa system,” Coyne said. “Australia’s border security arrangements are being exploited, and individuals who have not been appropriately identified are at times entering the country.”

  “The Australian black economy is indeed being supported by organized crime, who along with businesses involved, are using these methods to exploit workers, and those involved are not paying taxes and are often remitting their salaries out of the country,” he said.

  Emma Germano, the horticulture president of the Victorian Farmers Federation, said that the Australian agriculture sector was at the “coalface” of the problem given the industry’s reliance on labor hire firms.

  This meant growers feared being implicated in scams involving foreign workers, but were powerless to change the system, she said, adding that as many as 60 to 70 percent of workers on farms in some regions did not have proper work documents and were paid as little as A$4 per hour.

  “These poor workers who don’t have the law behind them will never come and work for us directly as growers. So, as much as we might like to employ them directly, they’ve got a huge fear of retribution from these criminal syndicates who have often tricked them into coming into Australia, make them believe that they’ve got the right to work here when they get here, potentially taken their passports from them when they arrive,” Germano said.

  “We’ve got growers who are paying upwards of A$31 an hour for staff, and workers who are being paid as little as A$4 or A$8 an hour. That money is going somewhere in between. As a grower, I can assure you we would like for that money to be going into workers.”

  Former deputy secretary of the department of immigration and border protection Abul Rizvi said that the “eye-watering” blowout in bridging visa numbers indicated a “sick system.”

  Visitor visas now account for about 25 percent of the country’s total net overseas migration intake, in what was an “indication of a sick system,” he said.

  “In the past, 5 percent, perhaps 10 percent, may have been regarded as acceptable, [but] 25 percent is a problem. It’s flashing red,” Rizvi said. “The people we’re talking about are generally vulnerable people. They will have little financial resources and they are being exploited — they’re being exploited by criminals and they’re being exploited by unscrupulous labor hire companies. They have a right to seek asylum, certainly, but they don’t deserve to be exploited.”

  Keneally said that the roundtable was aimed at bringing together “a coalition of organizations” who wanted to address the problem of airplane arrivals, accusing the government of being “asleep at the wheel.”

  “Let’s be clear that what we are talking about — we are talking about people smugglers moving their business model from boats to planes. That’s what’s happening here,” Keneally said.
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