Australia illegal migrant amnesty program legalization

Some who are against immigration amnesty point out that persons who are in the country illegally have already broken the law and should not be granted legal immigration status.

They also claim that granting immigration amnesty will embarrass immigrants who follow the rules when applying for immigration status. Resources How Do I? Contact Us. The process while seeking immigration amnesty is: You have to first check if you are eligible for immigration amnesty. As mentioned earlier, the laws concerning this issue change frequently. Normally, if you have overstayed your visa or have entered the US without the proper visa, you may qualify for immigration amnesty. The federal government is trying to reduce its own spending and is using staff cuts to do so.

The immigration department won't be able to put any extra men in the field to find the illegals. In the past all the department has been able to do is run an occasional sweep through various immigrant enclaves -- Chinese, Vietnamese, Greek, Turkish -- trying to flush out those without formal citizenship. Those sweeps have not been very successful as many immigrants don't bother to seek citizenship but do have immigration papers in order.

Most illegal immigrants simply avoid trouble by paying their taxes and avoiding political activities or contact with police or social welfare authorities. Officials said that they had not yet completed a full analysis of those who came forward in response to the amnesty, but the main groups represented in the applicants for regular immigrant status appea red to be English, Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, and Greek. Already a subscriber? Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in.

We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations. Your subscription to The Christian Science Monitor has expired. You can renew your subscription or continue to use the site without a subscription. If you have questions about your account, please contact customer service or call us at In the mids Canada's asylum seeker approval rate was 70 per cent; in it was 56 per cent. Most of the remainder would appear to simply stay and join Canada's illegal population.

It appears as if energy is put into removing only those refused applicants who have committed crimes in the past, or who have committed serious crimes in Canada. Boat arrivals have increased this year, many from Fujian province in southern China.

Over boat people arrived between 1 July and 10 December As in Australia, the Canadian public is sharply divided, with some wanting to welcome the boat people to Canada, and others wanting to turn them away. Canada describes its refugee policy as the most humanitarian and compassionate in the world. However the UNHCR has apparently criticised Canada for its high acceptance rates, as discrediting the international refugee system.

Canada's Immigration Plan 27 includes a notional target of 'Government sponsored' refugees; people from refugee camps overseas that the UNHCR has determined need to be resettled in a third country. In a reversal of the situation in Australia, twice as many places are allocated for 'refugees landed in Canada', and their dependents, i. Canada's high on shore asylum seeker acceptance rate has been a contentious public issue. The illegal population in Western Europe is unknown, but is generally considered to rival that of the US.

Estimates are complicated by the periodic regularisation of status of illegal and asylum seeker populations who have found stable employment and effectively settled, often with their families. In Germany received about 99 asylum applications, Switzerland 41 , the UK 46 , France 22 and Finland Italy received over 10 , up from in , and in The acceptance rate for European countries is generally lower than for the traditional immigration countries, varying in from 0.

A number of those not granted refugee status may however be permitted to remain on humanitarian grounds, often with temporary or provisional visas, and with less access to public benefits. Few failed asylum seekers actually leave, however; most of those not granted refugee or humanitarian status simply remain and merge in with the illegal population. The UNHCR has estimated that while over 80 per cent of asylum claims are rejected, fewer than 25 per cent of failed asylum seekers actually leave the country in which they lodge their claim.

So far this year over 20 Albanian boat people have arrived in Italy, many en route to Germany. The illegal population in Italy has been estimated to be in the order of in recent years. Earlier this year the Italian Government provided an amnesty which 'regularised' the status of about undocumented arrivals who had established themselves in Italy.

This follows similar amnesties in and The illegal migration and asylum seeker pressure on Western countries is expected to increase over the next 25 years.

The only 'solution' envisaged by international migration forums is to improve the living standards, political stability and democratic institutions in countries of origin, so that people no longer want or need to move. In the meantime, 'receiving' countries, including the traditional immigrant receiving countries, will continue to tighten border controls and attempt to restrict asylum seeker entry. The officially non-immigrant countries of Europe and the UK will also intensify their efforts to integrate their sizeable illegal and asylum seeker populations that have become established.

Australia has been largely protected from the levels of illegal and asylum seeker movements experienced by other countries, by its physical remoteness, its lack of land borders and its strict visa regime.

With cheaper and more direct air travel, increasing temporary movements, tighter border controls and more restricted asylum seeker access in Europe and the USA, together with the advent of a highly sophisticated global people smuggling industry, 29 Australia could become a more attractive destination.

Besides relative economic and political stability, and remoteness from world conflicts, Australia offers well-developed and comparatively generous migrant and refugee settlement assistance and quick access to citizenship entitlements. Australia does not rank amongst the highest countries in the world in terms of illegal populations and asylum seekers, but it has entered the general ballpark. In per capita terms, Australia in had an estimated illegal population, per million population, of , compared with the USA's 20 per million population.

Australia, the USA and Canada are often compared on immigration issues. However Australia and the USA have different labour market and welfare traditions and cultures, and they also have different migration cultures. In the USA legal migration is dominated by family migration, and the focus of recent policy and debate is illegal migration. Canada's and Australia's migrant and humanitarian programs have been more similar, but have diverged in recent years, with Canada maintaining higher immigration intakes, even in times of relatively high unemployment, and a refugee program increasingly dominated by asylum seekers.

It is questionable whether many countries-Canada perhaps aside-would sign up to the international refugee convention today, or that it would be put forward as a workable way of addressing the refugee situation at the beginning of the 21 st Century. However Australia, along with other Convention countries, appears reluctant to revisit it, despite the skewing of the international refugee effort resulting from the focus of individual countries on their refugee determination systems, and their efforts to weed out possibly no less desperate 'economic' from political refugees.

Overseas experience suggests it is likely that more resources in Australia may be directed in future towards dealing with illegal arrivals and on shore asylum seekers. Practical and cost considerations as well as humanitarian concerns may force a revision of the detention policy, if numbers of illegal arrivals get much higher.

Additional policy and administrative resources may be needed to focus on regional refugee solutions, and on negotiating readmission agreements with sending countries further afield. And a decreasing proportion of Australia's annual refuge intake may come via UNHCR advice from refugee camps overseas, as increasing numbers of people seek protection visas in Australia.

See forthcoming Information and Research Services paper by Derek Woolner on issues in coastal surveillance. Illegal and asylum seeker information and statistics are taken from Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Fact Sheets www. The eastern coast arrivals in heralded Australia's entry into a new era of people smuggling, with the use of 'motherships' which remained outside territorial waters and contacts in Australia to ferry illegal migrants ashore.

Australia is one of signatories to the United Nations Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. The Convention defines refugees as people who 'are outside their country of nationality or their usual country of residence, and are unable or unwilling to return or to seek the protection of that country due to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinions'.

The basic principle and obligation under the Convention is that of 'non-refoulement', i. The policy of detention is described in DIMA Fact Sheet no 82, op cit, and was explored by a parliamentary committee in The estimate of 'unlawful' non-citizens resident in Australia is prepared at 30 June and 31 December each year, based on arrival and departure data from LSIA Reports are listed at www.

In , following amendments to the Migration Act, the PRC was declared a safe third country for the purpose of the Sino-Vietnamese former refugee boat people from the Beihai region in southern China.

They are thus precluded from accessing the refugee determination system. Also in the High Court upheld the then Government's position that people affected by China's one child policy do not constitute a persecuted 'social group' under the terms of the refugee convention. A high proportion of claims made under this policy are rejected. By the Reform Party. The Canadian Government claims its acceptance rate is under 50 per cent. However other observers inside and outside Canada including the Canadian Parliamentary Library usually calculate it as the number of positive decisions per claims concluded by a final decision.

A significant number of claims, including 50 per cent of boat people this year, are withdrawn or abandoned. Shenstone, op cit. Joe Manchin of West Virginia broke with his party.

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