Neil Para and Sugaa Neil say they feel free for the first time in a decade.
The couple and their three children were granted permanent residency in September, after living in Australia for more than nine years with no visa and no rights to work, education, or Medicare.
Returning Afghans have nowhere to go and the agencies said they fear for people's survival and reintegration in a country overwhelmed by natural disasters, decades of war, a struggling economy, millions of internally displaced people and a humanitarian crisis.
Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghans over the decades, including those who fled their country during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation.
At least 600,000 undocumented Afghans fled into Pakistan after the Taliban takeover in 2021.
The major surge in asylum applications started in 2015-16 with a labour trafficking scam abusing the asylum system using vulnerable people from Malaysia and China (see Chart 3).
Record asylum caseload at Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) By Abul Rizvi, P&I
Thus far, a staggering 26,000 foreign nationals have been granted permanent access to Australia not because they were a great fit for the community and not because they brought with them much-needed skills or a dose of high culture. They were granted this precious gift simply because they were loaded.
After allegations from a whistleblower inside PNG’s immigration authority that millions of dollars had potentially been misused, PNG’s deputy prime minister, also the minister for immigration, John Rosso, has ordered an audit into where the money has gone.
In a letter sent to Rosso, the whistleblower alleged widespread corruption within the program – particularly surrounding the hiring of cars.
He claimed private vehicles were “cross-hired” so as to disguise the beneficiaries of contracts, and relatives of senior officials were allowing their private vehicles to be hired through a front company, then claiming a personal benefit.
The whistleblower also alleged that contracts were improperly awarded, without an open tender process, and given to companies with no experience providing the services required.
Although Pakistan is not a signatory to the treaty, the UN’s Refugee and Migration agencies have appealed to Islamabad to reconsider. What has prompted Pakistan to pursue a path that will cause so much human suffering, and is so contrary to established norms?
Pakistan’s mass expulsion of Afghans is a historic tragedy. By Johann Chacko, The National
"Simone" arrived on a remote island to help asylum seekers.
But she witnessed something there that convinced her to leak over 2000 documents.
Reporters Paul Farrell and Maddison Conaughton investigate what happened.
OCTOBER 28 – NOVEMBER 3, 2023 | No. 473
The disclosure contained fewer syllables than the number of people trapped within it. The line was as short and unwilling as a secret: “There are currently 13 on Nauru.”
Speaking at Senate estimates, Michael Thomas, a first assistant secretary in the Department of Home Affairs, explained that 11 of those people arrived last month. “Those new arrivals were taken to Nauru in September this year.”
Thomas would not say where the people were from. He refused to say if any of them were children. “Just to characterise where the process is at: the group, at the moment, are going through the initial reception processes, which include identity, immigration, health and quarantine processes, managed by the government of Nauru.”
There was less detail than even the Coalition offered during its last term. The people involved have no nationality, no gender, no age. They are faceless, a non-people invented by this dreadful system.
“At this stage,” Thomas said, “providing more detailed information on the cohort may have implications for our international relations with Nauru and for individual safety and privacy issues as well. So I’d like to take that question on notice so we can provide you with as much detail on the cohort as is possible and appropriate, considering those factors.”
In the same hearings, it became clear an unknown number of people had been brought to Australia from Nauru and “detained as unlawful non-citizens”. They are locked up somewhere, with the government unable to say why.
“To be released into the community requires ministerial intervention to either grant them a visa or place them into residence determination,” Thomas said, “so a risk assessment process is undertaken at that point to make a determination about the best placement for them.”
Labor promised this brutality during the campaign. It long ago abandoned the humanity of refugees. One of the Albanese government’s first acts in office was a boat turnback.
In the past, politicians spoke of deterrence. They pretended these terrible decisions were made to prevent worse ones. They presented a false choice between torture and drowning.
The argument has always been strained, a sly justification of the country’s darkest impulses. It is even less credible when the torture is done in secret. The whole point of deterrence is that it is conspicuous. Without that, it is only cruelty.
The politics of this is simple. Labor continues the perversion so the Coalition cannot accuse it of ending the perversion. It is a kind of moral spiral. James Paterson, the shadow minister for Home Affairs, could scarcely contain his excitement. “Once again Minister [Clare] O’Neil and Labor have shown that they can’t be trusted to keep our borders safe,” he said in a statement, adding: “Only the Coalition can be trusted to keep our borders safe.”
The reopening of Nauru is the reopening of one of this country’s saddest wounds. It is a reminder neither Labor nor the Coalition has any real plan for refugees. All they have is a numb agreement to keep doing what they have spent the past few decades doing, trading lives for the narrowest of electoral gains.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 28, 2023 as "Reopening Nauru".
A 17-year-old boy is among a group detained inside the regional processing centre on the remote pacific island of Nauru.
He is one of 11 people, all Tamil speakers, who were taken to Nauru on September 7 under the offshore processing system set up by Australia.
These are the first people transferred to Nauru since 2014.
We wanted to remind you that ticket prices will go up soon for this extraordinary event, ‘Learning from the future: Foresight for the next decade of forced migration’. This is a one-time opportunity for you to gather with world-leading experts cutting through today’s uncertainty to identify possibilities for positive change in the next 10 years.
Don’t miss this event – and don’t miss the 30% savings offer that must end next week.
They work alongside police to bridge the gap between officers and multicultural communities around the state.
VIDEO: Liaison officers are joining the ranks of the police in north QLD. ABC News
PNG’s chief migration officer, Stanis Hulahau, said the 64 refugees and non-refugees would leave PNG within weeks, with the majority of those to be resettled in New Zealand. Sixteen may be sent to Australia for medical treatment, he said, after discussions with his Australian counterparts.
But while government sources in Australia confirmed Hulahau’s outline, questions by the Greens senator Nick McKim to Department of Home Affairs officials on Monday revealed the Albanese government is far from providing assistance to the refugees.
The Australian Border Force has confirmed it sent 11 asylum seekers to Nauru in September, the first transfer to immigration detention on the Pacific nation in nine years.
The evidence to Senate estimates on Monday from the head of operation sovereign borders (OSB) confirms a report in Guardian Australia revealing the Albanese government sent asylum seekers to Nauru just months after the last people were removed from detention on the island.
The final group of refugees still held in Papua New Guinea a decade after being exiled there by Australia will begin leaving “within weeks”, the country’s migration chief has committed, saying the majority will be resettled in New Zealand, while those suffering acute health problems will be brought to Australia for treatment.
Guardian Australia political editor Katharine Murphy talks to Andrew Giles, Australian minister for immigration, citizenship and multicultural affairs. They discuss Labors’ anti-racism strategies, and how social cohesion in Australia is at a tipping point following a bruising referendum, and an escalation of conflict in the Middle East.
Therapeutic specialist, David Chikwuba, is among those pushing for more cultural competency training in the industry, in the hopes that fewer young people will boycott available support in fear of being misunderstood.
"Empowering [young people] builds their self-confidence and from my experience empowering them just notifies them of the skills and abilities that they already have within themselves," he said.
Rathi Barthlote knows the pain and anguish faced by refugee women.
Ms Barthlote has for the past four weeks been on a 640km walk with other refugees from Melbourne to Canberra to call for permanent residency and an end to uncertainty for 10,000 people.
"We are refugees who came to Australia seeking safety, but after a decade still do not have a clear pathway to permanent residency," she said, arriving in Canberra on Wednesday.
Refugee women call for government to walk with them. By Paul Osborne AAP, The West Australian
For the past four weeks, we’ve trekked 640kms across Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT to highlight the impact of visa uncertainty for refugees.
We’ve had countless blisters, and – much to our horror – more than our fair share of snakes to contend with.
But we have kept going, strong and united and filled with hope.
Refugees in Palestine. Samah Sabawi, a Palestinian-Australian author in Melbourne, describes her family’s struggle as they try to leave Gaza.
VIDEO: Palestinian-Australian describes her family’s struggle to leave Gaza. ABC News
The cut-through of mercenary, racist and Trumpist tropes reflected in the “No” referendum campaign has many people, including refugees, alarmed.
We are better than this. By Jane Salmon, The Australian Independent Media network
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