When I was young, I remember being encouraged to give up lollies or chocolate for Lent. Always a good idea, until Easter Sunday ruined the diet. Later the focus was on doing something positive in Lent, rather than giving up something relatively trivial. It seems the focus of the Immigration Minister is to give up granting Protection visas and doing nothing positive for refugees. On 4 March, he made a decision limiting the number of protection visas (those granted to refugees onshore only) to 2773. It is likely this limit has already been reached, so no more protection visas will be granted before 1 July 2014.
The Minister did this once before, on 2 December 2013, when the limit was 1650. That was at the same time as a Senate disallowance motion against the reintroduction of the Temporary Protection Visa (TPV). The TPV regulation was disallowed in the Senate, then the Minister retaliated by limiting the number of protection visa grants to 1650. Some time later he removed the limitation and visas were granted again after a new regulation was introduced to prevent the granting of protection visas to those who arrive by boat.
The stated justification is that the quota of onshore visa grants has been, or will very soon be reached. As the new Government reduced the total of the refugee and humanitarian program from 20,000 back to 13,750, this means that there are less visas available. The increase in the program to 20,000 was one of the few good things to come from the Expert panel Report of August 2012, so the reduction of over 6000 visas is an extremely retrograde step, especially as the lack of visas was one of the reasons encouraging people to get on boats in the first place.
Probably the new limitation was introduced before the Senate could vote on this new regulation as the second disallowance vote was scheduled for this week but it has been adjourned to the end of the month. The Minister decided to get in first, probably as part of the pressure on the ALP not to support the new disallowance motion.
In the meantime, the High Court is also considering the regulation that prevents the grant of any protection visa for those arriving by boat. Currently, protection visas are available if someone meets the refugee or complementary protection criteria (protection criteria), provided they did not come by boat. If they meet the protection criteria but came by boat, they cannot get a protection visa.
The visa the Minister has been offering is the old visa used for the Kosovars back in 2000. This is a temporary visa, with no family reunion, and a legislative bar preventing a person with the visa from applying for any other type of visa, unless the Minister personally intervenes in their case. You can guess the likelihood of this Minister personally intervening to allow someone who arrived by boat applying for another type of visa. There is a number of cases of people who have married or formed long term relationships with refugees who arrived by boat, but legislatively they are prevented from lodging an onshore partner visa because their beloved came on a boat.
The Minister is determined to get the TPV reintroduced in some form. This is despite all the academic literature criticising the long term detrimental affects of the TPV on the mental health of refugees. This is despite the likelihood they may already have some anxiety, stress or PTSD from the experiences in their home country which gave rise to their refugee case.
More recently there has been serious criticism of the long term mental deterioration of people on bridging visas without permission to work, a policy of the former ALP Government. The report by Curtin University researchers Lisa Hartley and Caroline Fray is succinctly entitled 'Policy as Punishment'.
They conclude that the policy of the former Government to issue bridging visas with a no work restriction to those who arrived by boat after 13 August 2012, is extremely detrimental and is causing serious harm to people who may yet be granted protection in Australia. Asylum seekers are given the choice of payments below the poverty level, or to work for cash. We should be encouraging people to work and pay tax, not to force them into the black economy out of necessity, and then further punish them by cancelling their bridging visas
This no work restriction, like the reopening of Nauru and Manus Island, is presented as deterrence, but in reality is, as the authors state — punishment. The current Government supports the 'Policy as Punishment' and the ongoing vilification of asylum seekers by the Government is part of that policy.
This latest punishment — no more visas until July — is cruel. The people affected by this are those awaiting the grant of a visa because Australia accepts they meet the protection criteria but were just awaiting final checks such as a police clearance for Australia.
These refugees are living with us in the community, and many are contributing to the economy and well-being of Australia. They came seeking protection, and when their cases were accepted by the Government as requiring protection, we should be encouraging them to be part of our community, not vilifying them and punishing them. Maybe we should change the second verse of the national anthem — because we have nothing to share for those who've come across the seas and sought our protection. The cruel consequences of these policies will haunt us for years to come.
Kerry Murphy is a partner with the specialist immigration law firm D'Ambra Murphy Lawyers. He is a student of Arabic, former Jesuit Refugee Service coordinator, teaches at ANU, and was recognised by AFR best lawyers survey as one of Australia's top immigration lawyers.