I know you have all been asked to give a lot this year . . . but as with last year; we would like to be able to give something to every family and individual. For adults, we would like to be able to give a gift voucher for coles-myer (of say $20 each) and for our teenagers; we would like to be able to provide some movie tickets for the holidays.

If you are able to donate either of these or money towards our Christmas appeal, please send in or drop off vouchers, movie tickets or money to Heidi Abdel-Raouf (ASRC Casework coordinator). If you have any questions, please phone Heidi on ph.9326 6033 or email heidi.a@asrc.org.au The ASRC’s address is: 67 Jeffcott Street West Melbourne 3003

For younger children, we are fortunate in being able to access plenty of free, good quality new toys for children aged 1 – 12 years from the Brotherhood of St Lawrence so we will not require donations of toys this year. We do however need your help (again!) to be able to provide for teenagers and adults. Thank-you

This is a government that deliberately froze for over a year the processing of Afghan and Iraqi TPV’s holder permanent protection applications in the hope they could reject them in time and also politicised the protection process by rejecting most Iraqi’s and Afgans initially at the DIMA stage. The most salient example being that more than 50% of our Iraqi clients were rejected by DIMA and yet 99.5% were then accepted by the RRT!

Please note this decision does not affect anyone who has a permanent protection visa and it does not mean people on TPV’s will not be able to get a permanent visa, but it will be more difficult to get.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,20761616-29277,00.html

It just shows how we need to keep fighting the good fight to keep this government accountable for its actions and protecting the human rights of people seeking asylum.

2.    It’s denying people seeking asylum a fair go by not giving them the right to food…but this is what the Howard government does to thousands of people seeking asylum. On a bridging visa E you have no right to work or an income and are left to starve and beg to charities for your survival.

3.    A family should be able to be together…but for over1400 people who have been found to be refugees but granted only Temporary Protection Visas this is not possible, because they have no right to sponsor their family.

4.     No one should be denied the right to do an honest day’s work..but this is what the Howard government does to thousands of people seeking asylum each year by denying them the right to work on Bridging Visa E’s.

5.    It’s immoral to force people who seek asylum in Australia to become homeless and live in poverty…but this is what happens to most people seeking asylum because they have no access to Centrelink, public housing, settlement programs or Migrant Resource Centres due to Howard government policies.

6.    We are breaking the law in how we treat people seeking asylum in Australia…by the Howard Government having a policy of mandatory detention we are in breach of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Refugee Convention.

7.    It’s a disgrace that when DIMA releases a person from a detention centre they just dump them in the community with no support or care…but this is what happens when people seeking asylum are released from detention.  They are often very unwell physically and mentally afters years in detention.  They are released with no plan for their care, no support to resettle and no follow up to check that they are ok.

8.    It’s not fair to place people in detention centres when they have broken no law…people seeking asylum break no law when they come here by boat but our government still locks them away.

9.    It’s just not right that people seeking asylum are at risk of being locked away in a detention centre for getting an education…but this is what will happen for many asylum seekers in the community on a Bridging Visa E who have no right to study and will be placed in detention if they are caught doing so.

10.    A person should not have to try to take their own lives before we let them out of a detention centre into community care..but each year many people seeking asylum only get released from a detention centre after they have tried to kill themselves, due to despair and feelings of hopelessness.

We are concerned about these changes for a number of reasons, there is firstly the fact that there was no consultation from the Minister or notification to organizations such as ourselves of such changes. Such quicker processing will place extraordinary pressure on our capacity to continue to assist so many people as we do at the humanitarian stage.

Furthermore, these changes need to be seen in light of a recent interview that Minister Vanstone gave last week to SBS where she made unsubstantiated claims that asylum seekers were deliberately dragging out their stay in Australia and even more concerning were her claims that they were engaging in sham marriages. She provided no evidence to support her claims. Furthermore, she spoke of tighter controls in the future and quicker processing times but it seems she already has implemented them without any notice or consultation.

We do not understand the push for tighter measures and fear they are punitive rather than seeking to promote a fairer legal process for asylum seekers. We already have an approval rate of Ministerial requests that hovers at around just 5% and we are concerned the push for such quick processing will only hinder asylum seekers prospects of humanitarian intervention.

The Humanitarian Intervention Unit is already underesourced and stretched, dealing with many thousands of complex cases and cases that often are awaiting further medical and mental health reports. Reports that within this new 14 day time frame will often not be possible to procure. Furthermore, it can often take a number of months before asylum seekers can obtain from all their community links the neccesary letters of support, reports, references ect. We are concerned their will be a pressure to just say no to most of these cases without adequate time to consider their merits so as to meet these imposed deadlines.

Evidence for such fears are well borne out by our experience in the last year of a new legal time limits whereby DIMA Onshore Protection Department must now decide all cases within 3 months of application for asylum. We have seen a noticeable increase in rejections of people claims for asylum and in particular without even being interviewed, to ensure the time limits are meet.

Whilst we support a more efficient and expedient processing of asylum seekers legal claims to not leave them in endless limbo, it should not be at their detriment and compromise their legal prospects which is what these changes appear to do.

Kon Karapanagiotidis
CEO
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre Inc.

This is a program that is almost a year old and has provided assistance to less than 20 asylum seekers nationally! NGO’s have to make referrals to DIMA for clients to be considered for this program and then the decision rests with the department.

The serious problems with this project are:

1. DIMA refuses to provide guidelines for eligibility for this program
2. DIMA refuses to explain why an asylum seeker may be rejected from this program
3. DIMIA continues to refuse many many high risk asylum seekers, for example it took 2 applications for DIMA to accept into this program a terminally ill man with only months to live, having rejected him the first time
4. DIMA continues to deny access to many of the asylum seekers most in need
5. The process for accessing the program is bueracratic and unresponsive to the crises faced

DIMA will need to make significant strides quickly for this program to really be anything more than a shallow PR campaign promoting the idea that they are really caring for at risk asylum seekers. It is a real shame as this program was a great idea with wonderful potential but the good will is just not there at the moment.

Kon Karapanagiotidis
CEO
ASRC

Kon Karapanagiotidis
CEO
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre