Asylum Visa For Australia

The asylum visa for Australia is one of the common visas granted to refugees and those who are at risk of persecution. It acts as a protection from being deported from Australia and allows individuals greater opportunities to finding a permanent residence in the country.

An asylum visa allows a foreign citizen or national to apply for permanent residency in Australia. They are granted under the Migration Act 1958, and due to the nature of the circumstances surrounding asylum, they are considered to be ‘special visas’ issued under unique criteria.

Introduction

Since 1945 Australia has resettled over 700 000 refugees and displaced persons, including thousands during and immediately after World War II. Today, as part of its planned Humanitarian Program, the government allocates places each year to refugees and others with humanitarian needs.[1] There were 13 750 places allocated under Australia’s Humanitarian Program for 2009–10 (an increase of 250 places on 2008–09 planning levels). This comprised 6000 planned places for the resettlement of refugees under the Refugee category mostly referred to Australia by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and 7750 planned places under the Special Humanitarian Program (SHP). Australia’s focus for the resettlement of refugees in 2009–10 continued to be on those from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.[2]

While many are aware that Australia accepts a certain number of refugees and other humanitarian entrants each year, there is a great deal of misunderstanding on the details of Australia’s humanitarian responses and the complex visa arrangements for refugees and humanitarian entrants. Often the critical distinction between the places allocated for ‘refugees’ (people subject to persecution) and those allocated for humanitarian entrants (people subject to substantial discrimination) is blurred. This is compounded by the fact that the Humanitarian Program numbers are comprised of both onshore and offshore applicants. This means the 7750 places currently allocated under the SHP are shared between offshore humanitarian applicants and refugees granted onshore Protection visas (including those processed on Christmas Island) and immediate family members of Humanitarian and Protection visa holders already in Australia. 

Similarly, few understand the difference between Australia’s obligations owed under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (the 1951 Refugee Convention) which are met through the onshore component (asylum seekers applying for protection within Australia, including on Christmas Island) as opposed to its voluntary involvement in the resettlement of ‘refugees’ referred by the UNHCR which Australia does through the offshore component of the Humanitarian Program.[3]

Other misunderstandings in the public debate arise from confusion between the offshore component and the ‘offshore’ processing of asylum seekers on Christmas Island. This is not assisted by the latter being counted as part of the onshore component while those previously processed extraterritorially under the ‘Pacific Solution’ were mostly counted under the offshore component of the Humanitarian Program.

The aim of this Background Note is to provide greater clarity by tracking the development of Australia’s humanitarian responses. This then provides a context for examining the main criteria and processes for entry under both the refugee and humanitarian categories of the offshore component and refugee entry under the onshore component of the current Humanitarian Program. Some recent settlement initiatives for refugee and humanitarian entrants are also briefly examined.[4]  This paper also explains some key terms (in appendix A) and includes statistics back to 1945 (in appendix B).