Failed asylum seeker numbers to reach 100,000

The number of asylum-seekers who have had their application rejected but remain in the country is set to surpass 100,000, as the nation’s migrant visa crisis continues to grow.

Tony Burke and Governor-General Sam Mostyn during the swearing-in ceremony at Government House, Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

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The number of asylum-seekers who have had their application rejected but remain in the country is set to surpass 100,000, as the undocumented migrant crisis continues to grow.

There were 98,310 people who had lost their bid to obtain a protection visa but were yet to be deported, Department of Home Affairs figures have revealed, with another 27,211 asylum-seekers waiting for a decision on their ­application in June.

With 42,905 people appealing their refugee visa decision in the Administrative Review Tribunal, the number of asylum-seekers who have exhausted legal options to remain in Australia has reached 55,405. Some would also have applied to the Federal Court.

Opposition migration spokesman Paul Scarr said Labor needed to address the rising number of failed asylum-seekers in Australia, saying the humanitarian program needed to operate with “integrity and fairness”.

“We have now reached the stage where the figure is nearly five times our annual humanitarian program intake of 20,000,” Senator Scarr said. “Given this trend has occurred over a number of years, what is the government doing to manage the situation? When can we expect to see a downward trend in this figure?

“Is it just going to continue to rise year on year?

“These are serious questions the government needs to answer.“

Home Affairs and Immigration Minister Tony Burke has defended Labor’s handling of the migration system, saying the party inherited a mess from the ­Coalition and had since gone about reforming visa processing.

“When someone doesn’t have a visa, they should leave Australia,” a spokeswoman for Mr Burke said.

“We inherited a migration system which was taking almost a decade to process a protection claim, fuelling massive rorting of our migration system and allowing people to game the system to stay in the country for years.

“We have made changes to fix almost every aspect of that system, aimed at reducing processing times and quickly throwing out fraudulent applications. Undoing a decade of wilful mismanagement takes time.”

Former Immigration Department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said the unprecedented rise in protection applications was partially the result of “opportunistic” migrants seeking to extend their stay in Australia through an unmerit­orious asylum claim.

He said the issue of failed ­asylum-seekers staying after their visa had been rejected was an emerging issue for Australia. Only a handful of the cohort was deported each month, with less than 15 being removed in June.

“This has never happened before in our history,” Dr Rizvi said.

“We have in our history always managed to avoid the problems of North America in terms of unsuccessful asylum-seekers. We can no longer grin at Europe and North America and say ‘We avoided your problems’.”

Former Immigration official Abul Rizvi.

Dr Rizvi said the rise in undocumented migrants in Australia was a problem with controversial solutions, pointing to US President Donald Trump’s promise to deport illegal migrants.

“You can’t do what Trump’s doing, that doesn’t work,” he said.

“All that does is create media hysteria and community hysteria, and clogs up the legal system. When his term of office is over, you will find many people are not ­deported.”

Dr Rizvi said the number of asylum applications had risen significantly over the years, with the latest figures for the 2023-24 onshore humanitarian program revealing that 25,210 people had applied for protection. He said this was the second-highest number on record after 2018.

Vietnam lodged most applications with 3389, followed by China with 2760 and India with 2060.

Dr Rizvi said there were different drivers behind each country’s application number but he believed the spike in applications from Vietnam stemmed from a Coalition government program to recruit migrant workers for the agriculture sector.

“The government honoured the memoranda of understanding with Vietnam for one year; I reckon a big portion of people who came in as ag workers under that MOU applied for asylum,” he said.