faq refugees in australia

About refugees in Australia

Most refugees have come to Australia to build a new life for themselves. They have generally experienced severe hardship and many have suffered torture and trauma.

I came to Australian in late 1999 because we have suffered enough from discrimination and fundamentalist regimes during and prior to the Taliban regime. I was campaigning for a free and democratic system in Afghanistan. There my life was in danger. Now I live my life in Australia where everyone can have access to services, regardless of his or her race, religion, beliefs, gender and lifestyle. I am working and studying very hard to contribute to my new homeland. - Younus

What is a refugee?

A refugee is a person who is outside their country of birth or usual country of residence and is unable to return because they are likely to be persecuted. The persecution must be a result of their race, religion, political opinion, nationality or membership of a particular social group (Refugee Convention).
The person must not be a war criminal or someone who has committed a serious non-political crime.

Are people fleeing war and ethnic violence refugees?

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says that people fleeing wars and ethnic violence should be considered refugees if their own country is unable to protect them. This is the case even when the violence is committed by non-state groups such as militias and rebels. More recent conventions relating to refugees reflect this view.
The UNHCR is the international body responsible for leading and coordinating international action for the world-wide protection of refugees.

The UNHCR is the international body responsible for leading and coordinating international action for the world-wide protection of refugees.The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says that people fleeing wars and ethnic violence should be considered refugees if their own country is unable to protect them. This is the case even when the violence is committed by non-state groups such as militias and rebels. More recent conventions relating to refugees reflect this view.

What are the international laws covering refugees?

The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees is the main agreement that covers international law in relation to refugees. Other agreements relating to refugees include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, the1969 Organization of African Unity Refugee Convention and the 1984 Cartagena Declaration in Latin America

What is an asylum seeker?

An asylum seeker is someone who has applied for protection as a refugee and is waiting for a decision to be made. The application can be made oversees or in Australia, although the Australian Government much prefers that it is done outside Australia. Most people are now unable to make a claim for asylum from inside Australia.
All refugees have been asylum seekers but not all asylum seekers are found to be refugees.

How many refugees does Australia accept?

Australia accepts 13,000 new refugees each year.

How does Australia decide which refugees come here?

Each year the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs consults with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the Refugee Council of Australia, state governments and refugee communities in Australia to help them decide how many of the 13,000 refugees will come to Australia from each region (Africa, the Middle East, Europe, South East Asia, South America etc).

There are 6,000 places in Australia for people who do not have a proposer (see below). Almost all of these places are filled by someone who has been assessed to be a refugee by the UNHCR who is then referred to Australia.

After the initial UNHCR assessment, workers from DIMA conduct their own inquiries which include character, safety and health assessments. Those checks are conducted in person by DIMA officials working in the area where refugees are living, such as Pakistan, Thailand or Egypt. These refugees are then cleared to live in Australia.

The 7,000 places where the asylum seeker has a proposer (see below) are decided in Australia. The proposer, generally a family member or charitable organisation, lodges the application on behalf of the asylum seeker in Australia. The proposer must be an Australian citizen, resident or an organisation based in Australia. After the initial assessment in Australia, a DIMA official interviews the applicant back in the place where the asylum seeker is living. It then follows the same process as asylum seekers without a proposer.

Of course, for both refugees with a proposer and those without there are many more applications than there are places. For example, there are approximately 70,000 applications each year by asylum seekers with a proposer. In other words only 1 in 10 of this type of asylum seeker are granted refugee status each year. Both the UNHRC and DIMA try to award the limited places to the people most in need of resettlement.

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How do asylum seekers obtain a visa to live in Australia?

The Australian Government groups refugees into different categories depending on their circumstances, their support in Australia and how they came here

Offshore program

The offshore program accepts people who apply for refugee status before they arrive in Australia.

The government groups these people into:

* “standard” refugees.

* women who are at risk.

* people needing emergency rescue (generally at the special request of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) eg Kosavar refugees

* people who are refugees who have the support of someone in Australia such as a family member or charity organisation. The Government calls this support having a ‘proposer’ and these refugees Special Humanitarian Program entrants. Approximately 60 percent of refugees are Special Humanitarian Program entrants.

All of these groups of refugees have applied for protection after they have left their country of origin but before they get to Australia. For example a person from Afghanistan travels to Pakistan and applies for refugee status. In this case Pakistan is called the country of first asylum.

A very small number of people are given refugee visas while they are still living in their country of origin. Technically they fall outside the accepted definition of refugees because they are still in their own country. However, world leaders and the United Nations have agreed that ‘internally displaced persons’ are similar to refugees and deserve similar protections.
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Onshore program

The onshore program accepts people who apply for refugee status after they have already arrived in Australia. This program has been severely restricted, particularly for people who arrive in Australia without a valid visa.
People who have arrived in Australia with a valid visa (eg student visa), apply for protection and are assessed to be refugees are given a Permanent Protection Visa.

In the past the Australian Government issued people with Temporary Protection Visas. These were given to people who had arrived in Australia without a valid visa but were assessed to be refugees. They were only allowed to stay here for three years and had restrictions on the services they could access. At the end of the three years they could apply for further protection which may have been temporary or permanent.
New laws mean that any person arriving in Australia who does not have a valid visa will be taken to an off shore processing centre outside Australia. There is no guarantee they will receive a temporary or permanent protection visa to live in Australia or anywhere else.

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What have refugees experienced before they come to Australia?

It was four o’clock in the morning when the Cuerto* family awoke to a hail of bullets. They tore apart the walls of their hut in a small Filipino village. Elias Cuerto and his wife Ines were badly wounded by bullets and shrapnel. Clara, their 10-year old daughter received a shrapnel wound in her eye. Their four other children looked on in horror as Ines’s 72 year-old father was shot dead and Elias and Ines lay blood-soaked on the ground.

*The names of the Cuerto family have been changed to protect their identity

Refugees have a variety of experiences before they come to Australia.

Some common ones are:

Imprisonment without trial or following an unfair trial

Many refugees have spent months, years or even decades in prison, generally because of their peaceful opposition to, or criticism of, their government. Their government may have accused them of crimes they did not commit or given them no reason for their imprisonment. Often they have not had access to legal representation or have been gaoled without charge or trial. Conditions in prison are generally harsh. Gaols are overcrowded and lack basic facilities. Inmates have little or no access to education, recreation or medical facilities and are routinely tortured.
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Torture

Some examples of what refugees may have experienced include sleep deprivation, beatings, starvation, electric shock treatment, rape, brutal threats and solitary confinement.

Up to thirty percent of refugees living in Australia have been subjected to torture.

Severe harassment by authorities

This may take the form of routinely arresting someone and then letting them go, searching their home, removing possessions from their home or person such as computers, questioning friends and relatives about their activities, restricting their movement and making threats against the person, their family and friends.

Disappearance of family members, friends or colleagues

Many refugees don’t know what has happened to other members of their family or friends. They are often taken away by members of the military or police who use or threaten violence against the person, their family and community. Sometimes the person is removed by themselves and sometimes groups of people are taken away. Family and friends usually don’t know whether they have been imprisoned or killed. Trying to find out what has happened to their loved one is highly dangerous and can result in their own disappearance, harassment, torture or imprisonment.

Separation from family and friends

Like other migrants, refugees generally leave behind relatives and friends including wives, brothers, sisters, grandparents, close friends and even children. Unlike other migrants, most refugees have to leave in a hurry or in secret. They never get the chance to properly say goodbye to the people they have left behind. For some refugees there is little chance they will ever be able to contact the people they once knew.

Often, one person will go ahead of the others to secure a safe passage for other members of the family. This might be because the escape route is too dangerous, other members of the family are unable to travel, they don’t have the money to pay for the entire families’ passage or it would create too much suspicion for the whole family to leave. They then spend years waiting for their claim for refugee status to be accepted and hope they will be allowed to bring their family over too.

Uncertainty

Not knowing what is going to happen in the future is a feature of almost all refugee’s lives. They don’t know whether their application to be accepted as a refugee will be successful, they don’t know how long they will have to wait for that decision to be made and they don’t know where they will end up. Most refugees are unsure whether they will be able to work in the new country and whether other family members will be allowed to join them.

Years spent in refugee camps

Many refugees spend between one to ten years living in refugee camps. More than two thirds of recent arrivals to Australia who have spent time in refugee camps have been there for more than four years. The condition of most camps is extremely harsh. There is little sanitation, limited food and drinking water, no education facilities and few places for recreation. The camps are overcrowded, housing is temporary and refugees are exposed to extreme weather conditions with few places for shelter. Access to medical care is extremely difficult. Violence and rape are disturbing features of most refugee camps.

Bombing and other acts of war

Many refugees in Australia have escaped brutal wars. They may have lived in an area where constant bombs dropped around them. Refugees may have had their school, local hospital, place of employment or even home destroyed by bombs or deliberate fires. In most cases, the situation in their country is so volatile that there is no chance that any of the infrastructure will be rebuilt soon.

Separation from familiar environment and culture

All refugees leave behind almost everything that is familiar to them. Their cultural beliefs and practices, the language they speak and the people they are familiar with are no longer part of their lives. Even the flora and fauna they know and the temperatures they are familiar with might never be experienced again.

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What problems might refugees face?

Despite being amazingly resilient, refugees face a range of psychological, physical, cultural and environmental problems. These are generally a result of complex interactions between the traumatic experiences they had in their country of origin, leaving their familiar environment, settling in to a new country and the normal demands we all face. Their experiences have impacts on individuals, families and communities and the way they interact with Australian systems.

Psychological or emotional problems include:

* anxiety
* panic attacks
* flashbacks
* depression
* grief
* dissociation or numbing
* sleeping problems
* irritability
* aggressiveness
* eating disorders
* inability to plan for the future/preoccupation with the past
* emotional distress
* inability to trust
* shame and guilt

Some refugees suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The symptoms include:

* unwanted thoughts, memories, flashbacks and nightmares of traumatic events

* avoiding thoughts, memories, people and situations that can trigger disturbing memories

* sleeping, memory and concentration problems

* irritability

* over sensitive startle responses.

The physical problems of refugees are often caused by torture or the effects of war. Physical problems can sometimes be partly or wholly attributed to a psychological cause.

They include:

* deafness
* poor dental health
* injuries and disabilities including fractures, burns and scars
* chronic pain
* headaches
* hypertension
* diabetes
* delayed growth and development in children
* tremors, weakness, fainting, sweating and diarrhea

Difficulties trying to settle in Australia include:

* worries about a lack of money
* unemployment and underemployment
* lack of secure accommodation
* lack of understanding of the education system
* limited or no English skills
* concerns about losing their culture
* difficulties understanding and adjusting to Australian cultures
* finding a network of support people and organisations
* discrimination and racism
* lack of community leaders and support systems
* changes in family roles, family conflict and lack of extended family support
* concerns about family and friends living in their country of origin
* providing financial support to friends and family either overseas or living in Australia

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Where do refugees live now?

Approximately sixty percent of recently arrived refugees settle in NSW or Victoria. Figures from 2004/05 show the following breakdown:

New South Wales

28%

Victoria

28.7%

Queensland

11.3%

South Australia

11.4%

Western Australia

13.2%

Tasmania

3.4%

Northern Territory

1.4%

Australian Capital Territory

1.9%

Total:

100.1%*

*Figures do not total 100% because of rounding up

In NSW most refugees settle in western and south western Sydney

Where have refugees come from?

The countries Australia accepts refugees from changes over time, depending on the political and military situations in those countries.

In the 1990’s most refugees to Australia came from Borsnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Serbia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, the former Soviet Union and China.
From 2000 there has been an increase in the number of people arriving from Africa, particularly Sudan, Liberia, Somalia and Sierra Leone.

In 2004/05 the top ten countries of birth for refugees coming to Australia were:

* Sudan
* Iraq
* Liberia
* Afghanistan
* Sierra Leone
* Iran
* Kenya
* Egypt*
* Ethiopia*
* Congo

*Refugees from Kenya and Egypt would mostly be the children of Sudanese born in refugee camps in these countries.

What age are refugees living in Australia?

Most recently arrived refugees in Australia are under 30. Partly this is because people are arriving in Australia with significant numbers of children.

Figures from 2004/05 show the following breakdown for new arrivals:

Age

Number

0 - 4

1,770

5 - 9

1,895

10 - 14

1,720

15 -19

1,791

20 -24

1,358

25 - 29

1,265

30 -34

1,087

35 -39

809

40 - 44

566

45 - 49

378

50 - 54

214

55 - 59

129

60 - 64

84

65 - 69

59

70 - 74

13

75 - 79

12

80 plus

6

However, refugees have been arriving in Australia for many decades.

Despite the high proportion of young refugees among newly arrived humanitarian entrants there are thousands of people who originally arrived in Australia as refugees who fall into older age groups.
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What is the international situation for refugees?

At the beginning of 2005 the United Nations declared there was 19.2 million ‘persons of concern’ in the world. This was 13 percent increase on previous years. The 19.2 million was made up of:

* 9.2 million refugees
* 5.6 million internally displaced persons (people who have moved to another part of the country because of war or other organised violence but have not crossed an international border)
* 1.5 million refugees who have returned to their country of origin
* 2 million other people of concern
* 839,200 asylum seekers

There were 232,100 new refugees in 2004.

The largest groups came from:

* Sudan (146,900)
* The Democratic Republic of Congo (38,100)
* Somalia (19,100)
* Iraq (12,000)

The countries hosting the largest number of refugees are:

* Iran (1,046,000)
* Pakistan (961,000)
* Germany (877, 000)
* Tanzania (602,000)
* United States (421,000)

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