Word: australia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Cavanagh's office untangles April's events, one thing is certain: The number of asylum seekers seeking to enter Australia by boat is on the rise. Nine months into 2009, there have already been 1239 recorded "irregular maritime arrivals" in Australia; in 2008, there were only 161 during the whole year. On September 11 and September 12, two boats carrying 148 asylum-seekers were discovered off the northwest coast of Australia. On September 16, another boat carrying 58 people was intercepted 265 miles (420 km) north of Broome in Western Australia. Just the day before, the Australian government announced that...
...Australia's stance on immigration has been riddled with controversy for almost a decade. After a flash flood of boat arrivals in 2001 - 43 boats full of 5,516 asylum seekers arrived that year - the conservative John Howard government established the grimly named "Pacific Solution," which diverted asylum seekers arriving to Australia by boat to remote detention centers scattered around the Pacific Ocean. Holding camps were set up on the small island nation of Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, where would-be refugees were kept indefinitely while their applications were processed. Many were confined in the premises...
...bill" that detainees were forced to pay off at the end of their stay. (At a daily fee of $109, some detainees incurred bills of over $100,000 in the previous centers.) The Australian reports that since the beginning of 2009, 516 people have been granted permanent visas in Australia. Twenty one have had their applications rejected and have been sent back to their home countries...
...Australia's conservative opposition, the Liberal Party of Australia, blames this year's spike of boat arrivals - almost all with the help of human smugglers from Indonesia, Malaysia and other parts of Asia - on Rudd's new border policy. If nothing else, the Pacific Solution was at least an effective deterrent, they claim. In 2001, before Howard's program was implemented, there were 5,516 arrivals by boat; by 2002, there was just one. The numbers stayed below 60 until 2007, but have been increasing steadily ever since. "When you weaken laws for unauthorized arrivals, you are in fact creating...
...David Manne, coordinator of the Australian-based Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, doesn't believe Australia's shifting policies have any bearing on how many people show up in a given year. "Desperate people don't sit there in a tyrannical regime and study the fine points of our legal reforms," says Manne. "What they do is look for any way they can to get to a place of safety - to save their lives." Most of the Afghani refugees who arrive in Australia, for instance, are Hazaras, a large ethnic group that has been persistently persecuted by the Taliban...