FEWER than a thousand of Labor’s 50,000 illegal boat arrivals between 2008-13 were legitimate refugees, according to an ALP-appointed immigration expert.
Former Refugee Review Tribunal member Simon Jeans said the cost of processing these false claims was already upwards of $16b and would continue to clog up Australia’s appeals courts at least until 2026.
Mr Jeans, who was appointed to the Refugee Review Tribunal by the Gillard government in 2010, left his post in 2015 after the election of the Abbott government.
LOST CONTROL
“I was assessing appeals while on the Refugee Review Tribunal and spent hours in hearings listening to stories, reviewing the files and listening to immigration case officer interviews,” he told Sky News anchor Andrew Bolt on Tuesday evening.
“Since leaving the tribunal, I’ve been reading all the decisions and I’ve come to the conclusion that only about two per cent were refugees – and that’s on the generous side, giving the benefit of the doubt to people.”
The ALP lost control of Australia’s borders after incoming prime minister Kevin Rudd dismantled the Coalition’s Pacific Solution in February 2008. His decision was enthusiastically cheered by Anthony Albanese’s socialist Left faction of the ALP, as well as The Greens.
Labor at the time claimed the resulting 50,000 illegal boat arrivals – excluding at least 1200 known drownings – could not have been stopped without risking possible conflict with Indonesia, the source of most people smuggler boat departures.
The flow of boats, however, was peacefully halted within months of the election of Tony Abbott’s government in 2013.
REFUGEES
Mr Jeans said last month alone there were 45 judgements in the federal circuit court, another 12 in the federal court and 10 special leave cases in the high court.
“In my view, none of these people are refugees,” he said.
“What I’ve found is these [hearings] have been continuing since about March 2015 on a consistent basis. So every month since March 2015, there have been about the same number of cases involving migrant boat arrivals – and on the current figures it’s going to last well into 2026.”
Mr Jeans, who also served on the Gillard government’s Migration Review Tribunal, said it was clear from his experience illegal arrivals were providing “made-up” stories.
“From my experience and with talking to these people whether from Iran or Sri Lanka, it was clear that they were not refugees, that they were making up rather extraordinary stories.
“There’s quite a lot of examples I can give you from that time, but the more recent ones in July are all published on the internet, so anyone can read them.
CHRISTIAN
“Iranians arrived here claiming they came to convert to Christianity, others attended a Christian church and then claimed to be Christian saying they would be persecuted if they returned to Iran.
“Or claiming their father was a senior figure who was killed…
“There is so many fabricated stories. One of the most popular stories for Iranians – who were the largest group by far of all the people who came by boat during that period – was to be a member of a persecuted minority.
“In one of the cases an applicant applied for citizenship and the Immigration Department said ‘well, you can’t establish your identity, we think you’re an Iranian citizen, you’re not stateless because you’ve been back to Iran twice’… yet he won his case in the tribunal.”
IRANIAN
Mr Jeans said the appeals would clog up Australian courts at least until 2026 – 18 years after Kevin Rudd’s decision to open the borders.
“That’s in the court system. It will actually go longer than that, probably until 2030 because there are lots of people on temporary visas – there’s thousands of Iranians who have been rejected as refugees and refuse to go home,” he said.
He said part of the delay was that Iran refused to accept any of its citizens who were unwilling to be re-patriated.PC
Bringing refugees in had nothing to do with humanitarianism, it was (and still is) a money making rort. It was certainly a boon for Rudd’s wife’s employment & training business. Developers have also done particularly well out of it. It is a way of channeling public money straight into the pockets of certain private sector individuals with political clout
We have enough problems already, we shouldn’t be importing anymore. Why aren’t we allowed to vote on this?. The values that made Australia great are being diluted, these people despise western culture, we are nothing but non-believers to them.
Why shouldn’t a legally elected government, rather than unelected tribunals/courts, be able to decide who migrates to their country? Border control is not an evil thing, despite what left wing virtue signalling types think