The growing inability to deport both failed and assessed asylum seekers who pose a security risk if granted Australian residency requires resolution.
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Letter to The Australian
(not published)
The growing inability to deport both failed and assessed asylum seekers who pose a security risk if granted Australian residency requires resolution.
Detaining them all indefinitely is not an option on humanitarian grounds.
But neither is blanket release or dilution of the necessary security checks.
Resolute action is now necessary to bolster public confidence in both the fairness and overall integrity of immigration law.
Former LTTE belligerents (who cannot qualify for refugee status anyway under the Refugee Convention), and proven supporters, now detained should be deported back to Sri Lanka without further ado once appropriate guarantees are obtained from that government so the non-refoulement provisions of the Convention do not apply.
Propaganda from the Tamil community in Australia and other LTTE apologists should rightly be ignored.
The valid principles underlying ASIO security checks of asylum seekers should be strengthened by the institution of a non-public but still accountable appeals process using similar operational security safeguards to those applying to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Intelligence Services.
After all, the former Security Appeals Tribunal set up to allow appeals of ASIO assessments generally was soon merged with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal because of pronounced lack of work and the lack of merit in most appeals.
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