Mission & Justice

Andra Jackson; 12/5/08

Coming to Australia after 18 months held in the Manus Island detention centre — 10 of them by himself — Aladdin Sisalem felt he had finally found a new beginning.Instead, the stateless Kuwaiti-born Palestinian found that he had merely exchanged one form of living in limbo for another. He was placed on a temporary protection visa that banned him from applying for permanent protection for five years.He has spent the past four years not knowing if he would have to uproot himself and try all over again to find another country to take him at the end of next year.

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Eamonn Duff; 11/5/08

A blitz by the Department of Immigration on more than 20 homes and businesses has uncovered “one of the worst cases ever” of foreign worker exploitation and migration agent fraud. The two-day sting across the NSW Riverina region was sparked by a Sun-Herald investigation that exposed an illegal migration racket involving hundreds of Indian tourists. Arriving on holiday visas, the men and women gained bridging visas through a network of crooked migration agents who, for thousands of dollars in cash, lodged “grossly unfounded” asylum claims. The tourists were then sent by a labour hire agency called Primary Contracting Services to Rorato Nominees’ tomato farm in Jerilderie where allegations of sexual assault, exploitation and a series of workplace violations had all surfaced.

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2/5/08

The federal government has cut a compensation deal with an Australian man wrongfully held in immigration detention for more than eight months. Immigration Minister Chris Evans said he welcomed a NSW Supreme Court decision to approve the settlement for the man, known only as Mr T, who was unlawfully detained by the department on three occasions between 1999 and 2003. Officials suspected Mr T was an unlawful non-citizen, but later found him to be an Australian citizen. Mr T was compensated for mental and physiological suffering during the eight-and-a-half months he spent in detention, Senator Evans said. “This was obviously a very traumatic experience for Mr T and we hope this settlement will now enable him to move forward with his life”, he said.

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Paul Maley; 29/4/08

Fewer than a quarter of young, degree-educated migrants are finding skilled or professional jobs in their areas of study, and graduates are leaving university with poor academic standards and minimal English. A study by Monash University academics Bob Birrell and Ernest Healy found the problem was particularly acute among students from non-English-speaking backgrounds who had studied at Australian universities. Only 22 per cent of Australian-trained graduates aged between 20 and 29 who were migrants from non-English speaking countries were in professional roles in 2006. The figure compared with 57 per cent for English-speaking migrants and 64 per cent for Australian-born graduates.

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29/4/08

The controversial citizenship test could be made easier in an effort to make it fairer, despite figures showing a 95 per cent pass rate. The federal Government has announced the makeup of the committee that will review the seven-month-old test introduced by the Howard government. The 20-question test, drawn from the Becoming an Australian Citizen resource book, has been attacked as being unfair to migrants. There are concerns that some questions - especially those that ask applicants to recall historical dates or name sporting figures - may be inappropriate.

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Connie Levett; 28/4/08

A Sierra Leonean refugee despairs at yet another obstacle to bringing the partner and daughter she thought were dead to Australia. It is a simple DNA test, but when you can barely afford a nappy, $1850 is a lot to pay to bring your family back together. For 17 months Abi Sesay has been fighting to bring her husband and daughter, whom she had assumed dead in the civil war in Sierra Leone, to Australia. She has post-traumatic stress disorder and post-natal depression. She has spent thousands of dollars on applications and medical and police clearances. Her migration file has gone astray. And now the Immigration Department has come up with the expensive DNA solution.

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Sean Parnell; 25/4/08

The border between Australia and Papua New Guinea is set to be tightened after a ministerial forum in Madang agreed it was time for “proper application” of the free movement provisions in the Torres Strait Treaty. As revealed by The Australian last month, both governments are aware that thousands of PNG citizens are illegally crossing the border to access Queensland Health clinics. The treaty, signed 30 years ago, allows traditional activities to continue between specified villages on both sides of the border - but that does not include visits to clinics, and some of the PNG citizens fronting Queensland Health clinics have come from villages not recognised under the treaty.

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Dewi Cooke; 22/4/08

More than one-third of Australians think immigration levels are too high. The research, by Monash University’s Institute for the Study of Global Movements, points to lingering worries about immigration and race issues in Australia, despite decades of rapid demographic and cultural growth and increased government emphasis on migration to ease the skills shortage. The findings come after the Federal Government’s recent decision to raise the skilled migration quota by 6000 this year, taking the number of skilled migrant visas to 108,500 by 2007-08. But this environment of diversity has not eradicated concerns about immigration among the general population. Overall, 35% of the 2000 people surveyed — most of whom were Australian citizens — believed the current immigration intake was too high.

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Mark Dodd; 21/4/08

Troubled South Pacific states would be more democratic and economically viable, and Australia’s future security would be enhanced, if the federal Government adopted a more liberal Pacific migration regime. The Rudd Government is moving to establish a trial of a short-stay visa program for Pacific islanders and expects to announce the plan at the Pacific Island Forum in Niue in August. ACTU president Sharan Burrow yesterday gave qualified union support to allow Pacific islanders and East Timorese working rights in Australia, as part of a broader Australian-South Pacific engagement policy endorsed at the 2020 Summit. “Stronger economic integration is absolutely on the agenda,” Ms Burrow said. “In our group, we predicted by 2020 you would effectively see a common market around the southwest Pacific, and we’ve also got some responsibility for East Timor, and I’m delighted to say the security and prosperity group found the Pacific was a first-order priority.”

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Mike Steketee; 22/4/08

After six years in a detention centre and another three years living in Melbourne as a refugee, Hossein is “dying” to be re-united with his wife and two children. The Government has approved a spouse visa to enable them to come to Australia - but only if he agrees to pay $200,000. That, the Government says, is the cost of keeping his wife, daughter and son locked up in the Curtin Detention Centre in Western Australia for three years. The family decided in 2002 that the mother, 17-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter should return to Iran to spare the children further trauma in detention. “There were so many people cutting themselves, hanging themselves and eating things to kill themselves, we were afraid the children would lose their minds in that hell,” Hossein told The Australian.

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