Officials fail to catch up with illegal workers

Home Affairs is not identifying and deporting as many illegal workers despite the number of refused asylum-seekers living in the Australian community reaching record levels.

Abul Rizvi when he was first assistant secretary of the Migration Division in 2003. He has warned record numbers of illegal workers are caught in a ‘scam’. Picture: AAP

The Department of Home Affairs is not identifying and deporting as many illegal workers despite the number of refused asylum-seekers living in the Australian community reaching record levels.

At the end of September, the number of asylum-seekers whose visa applications had been rejected by Home Affairs and by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal surpassed 28,000, according to official monthly asylum reports.

Former Immigration Department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi said the level of illegal workers was unlike anything Australia had ever experienced, saying that in the past there would never have been more than a “few hundred” living in the community at the same time.

He expected most of the illegal workers to be on farms, away from the “prying eyes of the ­Department of Home Affairs”.

“We shouldn’t be surprised by this because this is how this issue has operated in North America and Europe for decades. It’s just that we’ve come to it late,” he said.

“In North America and ­Europe there are tens of thousands of refused asylum-seekers living in the country, working ­illegally, predominantly on farms and being exploited.”

The fall in illegal workers being located and removed from Australia could be attributed to three factors, Mr Rizvi said.

Sending immigration officials to far-flung farms was an expensive exercise. Secondly, he questioned where the illegal workers would be housed even if they were found, saying there was “no room” in detention centres. Thirdly, sending compliance officers to farms during harvest season would cause farmers to “go berserk”.

Once their appeals are dismissed, these economic immigrants – largely Chinese and Malaysian – live and work in the community illegally. Despite the soaring figures, the number of times officials located illegal workers plunged from more than 2394 in 2017-18 to 490 in the last financial year.

According to the department’s 2020-21 annual report, illegal worker warnings issued by the ­department to employers fell from more than 400 in 2016-17 to 150 in 2020-21.

Mr Rizvi said immigrants would be brought to Australia by labour organisers on a visitor visa, presented with an ­application for asylum and told to sign the document, providing them with working rights for three or four years.

“The people organising this will look to resume the scam once borders reopen,” he said. “And the incentive to resume it would be because they can supply labour more cheaply than the labour that is supplied through the Ag (agricultural) visa and the Pacific Islands.”

A spokesman for the Department of Home Affairs said despite the impact of Covid-19, Australian Border Force officials continued to “combat the exploitation of foreign workers”, including a focus on higher risk industries.

“Unlawful non-citizens are located, detained and removed in accordance with rigorous prioritisation based on risk and harm to the Australian community,” the spokesman said.