It’s time to consider an amnesty for thousands awaiting deportation from Australia
- ruby457
- Feb 21, 2020
- 1 min read
This week, Shadow Home Affairs Minister Kristina Keneally raised concerns that there are now around 50,000 people awaiting deportation from Australia. All of them arrived by plane and applied for asylum in Australia, but their claims for protection were rejected.
Keneally’s central thesis was that the number of people awaiting deportation has grown so large because the time taken to resolve protection claims is too long, border controls at airports are too open and deportations are not keeping pace with failed claims.
The longer term policy question arising from Keneally’s concerns is how to go about resolving the cases of the tens of thousands of people whose claims have been rejected. To understand the scale of the problem, let’s consider the different categories of legacy cases.
In the second half of 2011, Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s government was under pressure over its policies on irregular maritime arrivals and the growing number of asylum seekers in the country.
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