It would take 100 years for the Commonwealth Government to resolve the cases of the 7000 asylum seekers living in Australia on bridging visas, Greens senator David Shoebridge estimates. Source: The Guardian.
The group of 7000 arrived in Australia by boat before 2013, when the Rudd Government determined that no asylum seekers arriving by sea would be permanently resettled in Australia.
In 2014, the Abbott Government established the “fast track” scheme to assess whether more than 30,000 asylum seekers could seek protection.
About 19,000 passed and were then placed on temporary protection visas (TPVs) and safe haven enterprise visas (SHEVs), which advocates said left them in a permanent limbo.
Before the 2022 election, Labor promised to abolish the TPV and SHEV visas and allow them to apply for a permanent Resolution of Status (RoS) visa.
However, about 7000 asylum seekers were rejected through the fast-track process.
Their only pathway to permanent status in Australia is through ministerial intervention by the Home Affairs Minister, Assistant Immigration Minister, and Assistant Minister for Citizenship and Immigration.
The intervention would allow those people to apply for permanent visas.
Figures released to The Guardian show that between July and November 2024, just 24 people have had their cases considered; 19 whose cases were intervened, and five were not.
At this pace, Senator Shoebridge said, it would take about a century to process the cohort, calling it a “farce”.
“That’s not a process, it’s a cruel hoax,” he said.
Upon allowing the 19,000 asylum seekers who had passed the fast-track process to apply for RoS visas, the Government moved to abolish the immigration assessment authority that administered the scheme.
By abolishing the authority, that closed the path for the 7000 rejected people to retry their cases. Ministerial intervention is now their only option to apply to stay in Australia.
Human rights lawyer David Manne said the Government needed to create additional pathways for the asylum seekers to find settlement solutions.
The Guardian contacted the office of Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke for comment.
FULL STORY
It would take 100 years to resolve claims of 7,000 asylum seekers stuck on bridging visas, Greens claim (By Krishani Dhanji, The Guardian)
