You've probably heard of the idea of the asylum seeker arriving by boat as a “queue jumper”.
Where does this idea of the “queue jumper”
come from?
Well, there is no queue to claim protection.
It's not like going to the deli at Coles and taking a ticket
and waiting for your turn to be protected as a refugee.
So let's unpack this a little bit more to
see why we have this sense of a “queue jumper”
in Australian discourse.
At the moment, Australia sets aside 13,750 places for refugees each year.
Most other countries don't have a quota system
like this so it's something that we have done as a matter
of policy, certainly not as a matter of legal obligation.
In the last few years, Australia has set aside 6,000 resettlement places for refugees in
camps or urban areas in other countries.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
UNHCR, has a look at who has the most acute need
for resettlement and then they decide on a list of people
who are resettlement priorities and that list is then looked at by the Australian government
and other countries that resettle refugees from camps
and other areas abroad.
In many parts of the world, there aren't refugee
camps for people to reach and so often people
are living in slum areas or in urban areas without rights to work at risk of being detained
and so on.
The other point to note is that UNHCR's
resettlement priorities don't operate according to when you actually turned up
and registered with UNHCR.
It operates more like a hospital triage system.
So if you're sitting in emergency with a broken
arm and somebody comes up in respiratory failure,
then of course the doctors are going to help that person before they attend to your
broken arm, even though you were there first.
And it's the same with refugee resettlement.
There isn't a queue, it's not like lining
up at the deli.
It depends on how dire your circumstances
are as to whether or not your prioritised for
resettlement.
In addition to the 6,000 places
set aside for refugee resettlement from overseas, Australia has historically had 7,750 places
in its Special Humanitarian Program.
Now what's this?
This is a program that is designed to bring other vulnerable people
across from overseas for instance, women at risk.
Women perhaps who are on their own
and at risk of sexual violence in their home country.
It's also been used as a way for refugees
already in Australia, to bring across family members left behind.
It's out of this number, the 7,750
that asylum seekers arriving in Australia, whether by plane or boat, have their visa
component taken.
So when we sometimes hear that asylum seekers
who arrive here by boat are taking the places of refugees from camps and other settlements
overseas, that's inaccurate.
Those 6,000 refugee places are quarantined for resettlement and the onshore arrival component
comes out of this other Humanitarian Program.
Many people say that asylum seekers
are coming here for economic opportunities.
In other words, they are economic refugees.
However the statistics don't bear this out.
Between 2011 and 2012, the Immigration Department
statistics show that 93% of asylum seekers
who came to Australia by boat were in fact genuine convention refugees
whom Australia has an obligation to protect.
As you'd know, Australia receives refugees
who come here by plane or by boat.
Why do people arrive in such a way to Australia?
Let's take the boat example.
People come by boat because very often t
here are no camps for them to get to.
And they can't necessarily register with the
UN agency.
Furthermore, it's a bit like being in a burning
building.
Imagine you're waiting for the fire brigade
to come and the flames are encroaching on you.
You think, if I wait here,
the fire brigade might come, and I might be saved.
If I jump, I might die but I also might live.
And as those flames come closer to you,
you think the only opportunity I've got to survive is to jump.
And asylum seekers sometimes describe
the reason why they get on a boat as being similar to this.
Even though they know the voyage is dangerous,
they also know that it might offer the only opportunity for protection.
If they're sent home, then they will be
at risk of persecution, maybe even death or torture.
If they get on a boat, they might lose their
life at sea, but they might also have a chance of being
protected and so that's why people take very risky boat
journeys, not because they want to, not because they're
seeking an economic future or anything like that.
It's because they are fleeing for their lives.
Currently, it's estimated that there are around 15.4 million refugees in
the world.
Every year, UNHCR identifies about 800,000
refugees who really need to be resettled in other countries
because of their need for protection; however, there are currently only 80,000 places
all over the world where countries agree to take refugees.
So you can see what the disparity is
between the number of refugees needing resettlement and the number of places available.
The Refugee Council of Australia has calculated
that it would take around 117 years if you were to sit and wait to be resettled,
if all refugees in the world could in fact be resettled.