Australia raises bar for asylum seekers

By Sid Astbury

SYDNEY, Australia (DPA): Australia, among the world's most culturally diverse countries, has a proud record on refugees.

Only eight countries have a refugee resettlement program and on a per capita basis only Canada has taken more.

Arriving refuge seekers are not turned out on the street as they are elsewhere, but put up in purpose-built facilities with classrooms, sports halls, clinics and computer rooms.

And yet Australia and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) are at war over the way the global refugee program operates.

UNHCR spokesman in Geneva Rupert Colville alleges that reforms proposed by Australia threaten "the safety and well-being of future generations of refugees".

At issue is the operation of the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees.

The Convention defines a refugee as someone who "has a well founded fear of being persecuted" -- a profile that fits many or even most of the 23 million languishing in refugee camps around the world.

But are all the 7 million currently shopping around the world for a passport and a new place to live correctly described as "refugees"?

Australia reckons to have incontrovertible evidence they are not.

Asylum seekers arriving illegally in Australia have passed through any number of countries where persecution was not on the agenda. They have also demonstrated they are free to travel and that they have the ready cash to do so. Some arrive with asylum claims still pending in other rich countries they have visited.

Australian Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock says the system must be overhauled to stop genuine refugees from being muscled out of the queue by economic migrants with cash and connections.

"Every time someone who arrives illegally is granted refugee status that means a place is being denied someone in more dire circumstances," Ruddock told DPA.

"If we open the floodgates to illegal arrivals our ability to help those most in need will be placed in jeopardy."

Ruddock terms a system "obscene" in which rich countries are spending US$10 billion a year dealing with arriving asylum seekers and yet less than $1 billion a year helping the UNHCR look after 23 million in refugee camps.

Australia is calling for a change in the global system of dealing with refugees that would choke off legal avenues for those arriving illegally whose appeals for asylum were rejected.

As a beginning, Australia intends to change its own rules to shut down access to the courts to those unwilling to accept the ruling they get when they arrive.