Asylum claims at six-year high as record numbers await decision

The number of people seeking asylum in Australia has hit a six-year high and a record 117,500 people are on shore awaiting a decision or deportation as huge backlogs and five-year wait times expose the country’s immigration system to exploitation.

The list of people in limbo is growing by about 1000 a month, creating a backdoor for people on temporary visas who run out of options, including students, to keep working in Australia by applying for asylum and entering the drawn-out appeal process.

It means those found to be genuine refugees are also forced to wait years for security.

The Labor government has spent $275 million to step up resourcing and accelerate processes after a review found delays were “motivating bad actors to take advantage by lodging increasing numbers of non-genuine applications for protection”.

But it faces a tough task in wresting control of the system as latest Home Affairs data reveals 25,210 people applied for protection visas in the 2023-24 financial year, the highest number of applicants since 27,931 people in 2017-18. More than four in five asylum claims were rejected, with applicants from Vietnam lodging the highest portion, followed by those from China and India.

Helen Duncan, chief executive of the Migration Institute of Australia, said it was “without doubt” that people who probably did not have legitimate claims were using protection visas to extend their stays in Australia.

“It’s not a situation we like to see because it means genuine refugees have their cases delayed because of huge backlogs and cases that have no merit,” she said. “If the processing was quicker, people wouldn’t be using it to delay their stay in Australia. But it’s there, so people use it in the wrong way.”

The clogged system is one of the challenges facing the Albanese government as it tries to address immigration under mounting political pressure ahead of the next election. Significant investments in the appeals tribunal system have started to hasten decision-making, but numbers continue to grow.

The number of people waiting for a visa decision ballooned from 28,700 to 32,600 throughout the 2023-24 financial year, while the number of people whose claims had been rejected but had not been deported rose from 75,000 to 82,900.

By the end of August, an extra 4500 applicants meant the combined total of people onshore awaiting a decision or deportation was 117,529. “We’ve set an all-time record every month since 2016,” said former immigration department bureaucrat Abul Rizvi.

There were 41,260 active cases contesting refugee claims in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal at the end of August. Half of appeals are taking more than 1,813 days – or five years - to resolve, while 95 per cent are finalised within 2269 days, or six years. About 9 per cent of cases are successfully overturned, while 74 per cent of decisions are maintained.

“Applications for reviews in the Migration and Refugee Division have more than doubled in recent years,” the AAT website says. “We have been unable to keep pace with the increased workload with the resources available to us.”

Rizvi said asylum claims in 2016 and 2017 had been dominated by a labour trafficking scheme sending Malaysian and Chinese migrants to work on farms, construction sites or in the sex industry. “It’s a different phenomenon now. It’s being driven, fundamentally, by the large backlog and slow processing,” he said.

“Once processing rates become so slow, protection applications become very attractive. If you have no visa options left, the combined effect of backlog and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal gives you many years in Australia with work rights.”

Students were also a growing part of the caseload, particularly as the government clamped down on student visas, Rizvi said. “You’re better off financially, in the short term, being on a bridging visa having applied for asylum than you are on a student visa, because studying is expensive.”

Home Affairs officials are speaking at several community-hosted events around the country this month to outline “what the Australian government is doing to stop the exploitation of protection visas”.

“Protection visas are for asylum seekers (or their family members) who face a real risk of significant harm or a real chance of persecution if they return to their home country – they are not for people who just want to stay in Australia to work,” online descriptions for the events say.

A Home Affairs spokesperson said it had boosted activity “to identify, detain and remove individuals who have sought to misuse Australia’s protection visa system”.

Applicants from Vietnam made up 13 per cent of asylum claims last financial year, at 3389 people, almost triple the year before. This was followed by people from China, of whom 2760 claimed asylum last year, and those from India, of whom 2060 applied for protection visas.

Success rates change each month as cases are assessed. But in general terms, more than 90 per cent of Chinese applications are refused, while more than 99 per cent of Indian and Vietnamese applicants have been rejected in recent months. Applicants from those three countries were each making up 21 per cent of new appeals in the first months of this financial year.

Deputy chief executive of the Australian Refugee Council Adama Kamara said it was not unusual for the number of refugee applications to change “given a range of factors, including new and ongoing conflict around the world”.

“However, the significant delays in refugee visa processing is no one’s interest. It creates uncertainty, stress and anxiety for those waiting and undermines a fair and effective review process,” she said.

“We are hopeful that the new reforms implemented by the government will work to bring down the backlog. These reforms were long overdue and it will take time to see the effects of them on the current backlog.”

Advocates emphasise the system is creating years of uncertainty for asylum seekers who are left in limbo, particularly for the 9 per cent who successfully have rejections set aside after years-long appeals.

Jana Favero, deputy chief executive of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, warned the wait times were evidence of a broken system needing an overhaul.

“System failures must not be conflated with blanket assumptions about the legitimacy of people’s protection claims based on the country they’re from,” she said.

“This will result in survivors of family violence and those facing persecution due to sexuality or political beliefs falling through the cracks and being returned to serious harm or even death.

“It’s absolutely critical that people’s legal right to seek protection is upheld and that a fair determination process is protected at all costs.”

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