Australia has announced an agreement with the tiny Pacific nation Nauru enabling it to send hundreds of immigrants to the barren island.
The deal affects more than 220 immigrants in Australia, including some convicted of serious crimes.
Australian Minister of Home Affairs Tony Burke signed the memorandum of understanding on a visit to Nauru, the government said in a statement on Friday.
Photo: AFP
“It contains undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received in Nauru,” it said. “Australia will provide funding to underpin this arrangement and support Nauru’s long-term economic resilience.”
Canberra did not provide financial details.
The Sydney Morning Herald said, however, that Australia would pay Nauru A$408 million (US$267 million) and about A$70 million a year thereafter under the deal.
“Anyone who doesn’t have a valid visa should leave the country,” Burke said in a statement. “This is a fundamental element of a functioning visa system.”
Australia’s government has been searching for a way to deal with immigrants who have no other country to go to when their visas are canceled.
The Australian High Court ruled in 2023 that indefinite detention was “unlawful” if deportation was not an option, leading to the release of 220 people.
The number of immigrants in that situation now numbers more than 350, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
In February, Australia paid an undisclosed sum for Nauru to accept three immigrants convicted of violent offences, although legal challenges have reportedly stalled their transfer.
Last year, Australia and Nauru signed an agreement spanning maritime security, defense and policing.
Nauru, population 12,500, is one of the world’s smallest countries with a mainland measuring just 20km2.
It is considered especially vulnerable to climate change and has high rates of unemployment and health issues, a recent World Bank assessment said.
Unusually pure phosphate deposits — a key ingredient in fertilizer — once made Nauru one of the wealthiest places per capita on the planet.
Those supplies have long dried up, and researchers today estimate 80 percent of Nauru has been rendered uninhabitable by mining.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Sunday announced a deal with the chief of Kurdish-led forces that includes a ceasefire, after government troops advanced across Kurdish-held areas of the country’s north and east. Syrian Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi said he had agreed to the deal to avoid a broader war. He made the decision after deadly clashes in the Syrian city of Raqa on Sunday between Kurdish-led forces and local fighters loyal to Damascus, and fighting this month between the Kurds and government forces. The agreement would also see the Kurdish administration and forces integrate into the state after months of stalled negotiations on
RSS