Thousands of lawyers, paralegals and interpreters across Australia have responded to new deadlines imposed upon asylum seekers to apply for protection, volunteering their time and expertise to help people at risk of being left destitute or deported.
Refugee advocacy organisations say asylum seekers are coming to their doors suicidal, and “broken” by the new demands.
At Melbourne’s Asylum Seeker Resource Centre alone, volunteer lawyers, paralegals and interpreters worked 26 hours at the weekend to lodge applications for asylum seekers facing looming cut-off dates. Volunteers at Sydney’s Refugee Advice and Casework Service have been working 18-hour shifts while Australia’s legal fraternity has volunteered hundreds of hours of pro bono assistance.
About 25,000 asylum seekers are living in Australia on bridging visas as their claims for protection are processed, more than 10 times the number of people held on offshore detention islands.
In an effort to move those people through the sclerotic “fast-track” process, the department of immigration has sent out hundreds of letters demanding applications – complex 60-page forms that must be completed in English – be finalised within 60 or 30 or 14 days.
Those who fail to meet the deadline risk losing any welfare payments, the right to work, the right to healthcare or even the right to ever apply for asylum.
Most of those issued with application deadlines have been in Australia between four and five years but have been invited to apply for protection only in recent months. The vast majority are on waiting lists for legal services – which stretch more than a year in most cases – to assist them with completing applications.
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre’s chief executive, Kon Karapanagiotidis, said the impact of the impending deadlines, and the threat of being left destitute or having a protection claim rejected, had caused immense suffering within asylum seeker communities, not only among those who had received letters but those who fear they might be targeted next.
“This has just been catastrophic for the asylum seekers caught up in this. Where once we had to call our critical assessment and treatment team once or twice a week to respond to someone threatening or committing self-harm or suicide, it’s five times a day now. This is breaking people.”
Under the fast-track system, asylum applicants can’t introduce new evidence as their case progresses, even if there are new occurrences of continued persecution in their homeland.
Lawyers say applicants for protection get “one shot” at their claim, and that if all of their information is not disclosed in the initial application, they won’t be considered or believed, leaving people vulnerable to being sent back to persecution in their homelands.
The application forms are long and complex, particularly for people who don’t speak English as a first language. They typically take, even with the assistance of a lawyer, eight to 10 hours to complete.
Karapanagiotidis said the staff and volunteers who had worked overtime to help complete applications had been affected, too. “This has caused a huge level of distress for our volunteers as well, seeing so many people who are just being crushed by this system. It is a system set up to fail people, and to break them along the way.”
He said the current cohort of application demands would be dwarfed by the welter of applications legal advocacy groups were expecting over coming months. But he said as the size of the looming demand became apparent, more and more people had contacted his organisation offering donations of goods, services and their time.
“The most brutal the system becomes, the more people respond and say, ‘How can I help?’”
At Sydney’s Refugee Advice and Casework Service, the only New South Wales organisation offering legal assistance to asylum seekers, the chief executive, Tanya Jackson-Vaughan, said asylum seekers were being sent into a “sheer panic” by the letters.
“We have student volunteers answering telephones and they are dealing with incredibly distressed people, who are suicidal, who are angry, and who are yelling. It’s extraordinarily traumatic for them.
“We have people working 18 hours straight, just to help more people complete their applications. We have people from the community giving up their weekends to help interpret or assist however they can.”
Australia’s legal fraternity has offered hundreds of hours of pro bono assistance, ethnic groups and community members have rung refugee organisations offering what help they can. “The offers of help have been extraordinary, people coming together and just saying, ‘What can we do?,’” Jackson-Vaughan said.
A spokesman for the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said the letters were an effort to resolve outstanding asylum claims. “Labor’s border protection failures which resulted in 50,000 illegal maritime arrivals (IMA) in Australia left a legacy of 30,000 IMAs whose claims for protection had not been progressed,” the spokesman said.
“All IMAs in this legacy caseload have been invited to apply for temporary protection visas or safe haven enterprise visas. It is their opportunity to present their claims for protection and resolve their immigration status in Australia.
“Letters are being sent to IMAs who have not made an application for either a TPV (temporary protection visa) or SHEV (safe haven enterprise visas). Failure to apply may affect some of the support services they receive.”
Senior sources have told the Guardian there is recognition within the department it cannot process the volume of applications it has demanded of asylum seekers but that there is political pressure to be seen to clearing the “legacy caseload” of thousands of asylum seekers whose protection claims remain unresolved.
About 24,000 people who arrived in Australia by boat between August 2012 and December 2013 are on the fast-track system for refugee assessment, which was introduced in December 2014. It strips key review rights from asylum seekers and expands ministerial powers to prevent initial decisions being challenged.
Before it was introduced, 90% of asylum applicants were found to have valid protection claims. Under fast track that number has fallen to about 70%.
The system has been promoted by the government as a mechanism to streamline the asylum protection system and deter its abuse, but critics have said it sets people up to fail.
Most asylum seekers on the fast track have spent years in Australia prevented from applying for protection because of backlogs in the system.
