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Asylum seeker test is ‘cruel, inhumane’
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| By Damir Govorcin
2 December, 2012 |
The Federal Government’s decision to apply the ‘no-advantage’ test to asylum seekers who arrive by boat and are released into the community is “cruel, inhumane, and immoral”, said Jesuit Refugee Service Australia (JRS) director Fr Aloysious Mowe SJ.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen announced that all arrivals after 13 August, when the Government’s expert panel on asylum seekers issued its report, will be subject to the ‘no- advantage’ test created by the panel, whether they are sent to offshore processing centres such as Nauru and Manus Island, or if they are released into the community because the offshore centres do not have the capacity to accommodate all of them.
The Pacific solution is collapsing under sheer weight of numbers, forcing the Government to release into the community thousands of arrivals who will be stripped of the right to work and other privileges afforded to previous asylum seekers, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
They will be left for up to five years with limited bridging visas which forbid work and family reunions, and offered limited rental assistance and welfare payments of $438.40 a fortnight.
With about 2500 people arriving by boat each month since the Pacific solution was announced, Mr Bowen said there was no possibility of sending everybody to Nauru or Manus Island which will have a combined capacity of 2100 people.
Fr Mowe says the decision to place asylum seekers in the community with no work rights and limited assistance is a “retrograde step”, and ultimately harmful – not just to the asylum seekers but also to the countries where they could potentially be resettled once their claims have been recognised.
Denying them the right to work for up to five years “will make the lives of already vulnerable people more miserable, deprive them of their dignity, and force them to be a burden on the Australian taxpayer”, he said.
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