The government of Australia recently entered into an agreement with Malaysia whereby the next 800 asylum seekers who arrive illegally by boat in Australia will be sent to Malaysia where their asylum cases will be processed. The deal still needs to have some kinks ironed out, but it seems that if an asylum case is approved, the asylee would join the (long) queue of registered refugees waiting for resettlement to Australia or elsewhere. While the asylum seekers’ cases are pending, they will have permission to work or study in Malaysia, and they will have access to healthcare (at least theoretically: the Malaysian government does not have a great reputation for its treatment of refugees). In exchange for taking the asylum seekers, Australia will accept 4,000 refugees–i.e., people who have already been determined to qualify for refugee status–from Malaysia, and Australia will pay for the plan. The hope is that by sending asylum seekers to Malaysia and putting them at the back of the resettlement line, the new plan will eliminate the incentive for people to come illegally to Australia.
The United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights has questioned the legality of this arrangement. But Australia is pressing ahead with the plan, and has already identified the first boatload of asylum seekers who will be sent to Malaysia. The Australian Prime Minister sees this plan as a way to reduce the lucrative alien smuggling business and protect refugees:
“I made it very clear that what I wanted to do was to break the back of the people smuggling model, to take away from them the very product that they sell, to stop people risking their lives at sea and to stop people profiting from human misery,” Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said at a news conference. “I wanted to see us do something to end the profitability of people smuggling.”
My question is, could the U.S. adopt such a model to discourage asylum seekers who enter the U.S. at our Southern border? Such people often make a long and dangerous journey from their country to ours. They pass through many countries before entering the United States illegally and applying for asylum. Thus, it seems these asylum seekers are subject to a “push” (a reason to leave their home countries) and a “pull” (a reason to come to the U.S. rather than another country). What if we eliminated the “pull” by sending such people to a third country to process their cases? Some thoughts:
For a start, we would need a country willing to accept our asylum seekers. The most obvious choice is Mexico. Mexico is trying to comply with international refugee law, and most asylum seekers entering the U.S. illegally have to pass through Mexico to get here. The asylum seekers from China and Africa who pay thousands of dollars to smugglers, are paying to come to the U.S., not to Mexico. And–no offense to Mexico–I don’t think asylum seekers would pay these exorbitant sums if their journeys ended in Mexico. So if we sent our asylum seekers to Mexico, it would reduce the “pull” factor and might discourage large numbers of people from trying to come here illegally (and risking their lives in the process).
On the other hand, there are good reasons why we should not adopt Australia’s model. A letter from Human Rights Watch to the Prime Minister of Australia makes some convincing arguments against “outsourcing” asylum seekers. First, there are real questions about whether the receiving country will treat asylum seekers in accordance with Australia’s (or our) human rights obligations. Second, forcibly transferring asylum seekers may violate treaty commitments. The HRW letter continues:
We are also concerned that this deal is premised on the dangerous notion that obligations of states party to the Refugee Convention can be transferred to states with no such convention obligations. Finally, we also fear that this deal tries to subvert the principles underlying refugee resettlement by transforming resettlement from a tool of international protection into a mechanism of migration-control.
To these reasons, I would add that transferring asylum seekers sets a bad precedent for how other countries will treat asylum seekers. The United States sets the standard for many areas of international law and policy. If we shirk our commitment to asylum seekers, other countries will follow suit. Finally, we often forget how much asylum seekers contribute to our country. Check out this list of famous refugees for some well-known examples of refugees who have contributed greatly to their host countries.
We will see how the Australian experiment proceeds. It will be relatively easy to determine whether the plan reduces the number of illegal migrants, but it will be difficult to measure how the plan impacts human rights. We need to look at both sides of the equation before we consider such an approach for our country.
Jason,
Most interesting to read your point of view, thank you for sharing it. As an Australian, I am appalled and disgusted by the government’s latest refugee swap deal with Malaysia. As Alan mentioned above, offshore processing has a dark and controversial history in Australia. This is just another example of trying to process asylum seekers away from the eye of the Australian public, but taken to a new extreme. The current Labor government has been under all sorts of pressure to decrease the number of asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat (we will ignore for a second the push factors you’ve mentioned, or the actual miniscule contribution that these people make to our refugee intake, let alone immigration). After being unable to find another suitable venue to process them, Australia had to provide the incentive to the Malaysian government that we would take 4000 already processed refugees in return.
The fact remains that this policy is inherently cruel for one simple reason. It aims to discourage asylum seekers from coming to Australia via boat, by punishing them. At the very crux of the policy is the fact that the conditions in Malaysia are much less desirable than those in Australia, on Christmas Island or otherwise. So regardless of assurances to provide healthcare or education or otherwise, the fact remains that their living conditions are (by definition) worse than those in mandatory detention in Australia. Now, we already have vast information about the mental health issues that asylum seekers are facing in overcrowded mandatory detention facilities in Australia. We know that they are protesting and going on hunger strikes because things are so bad. Yet, what this policy is saying is, we’ll put them in conditions that are even worse.
As an aside, refugees in many countries are granted access to education and healthcare. Whether that translates into anything or not is a different story. I have seen firsthand in India, that refugees from Burma are unable to get adequate healthcare and education because when they go to hospitals or schools, they are constantly under the threat of sexual abuse, or violence. Granting access to something and actually being able to access them are two different things.
On whydev.org, we have had a few people write extensively on this topic, and on the refugee swap. As Australians, our government has provided us with plenty of good reasons to rant against their refugee policies! You can find them here: http://www.whydev.org/tag/refugees/
The Australian case is an interesting one and I think a bit more complex than you might think. Firstly, the concept of processing asylum seekers outside Australia’s borders has been highly controversial. The Howard government did it using what was termed the “Pacific solution” where asylum seekers were processed in places such as Naru. The number of asylum seekers dropped off dramatically following the implementation of this policy. Without doing any research one could claim the drop in asylum seekers was due to that policy, but I think that conclusion is a bit rash. The other thing that Australia did was to empower their security and police services to work with Indonesia, which was acting as a base for people smugglers, to intervene and inhibit smugglers. What all this leaves unaccounted for is what was happening with people smugglers at the source.
Today, in Australia, the Labor government has reacted to the uptick in asylum seekers and sought to process once again off shore. They have signed a deal with Malaysia, but again to considerable domestic reaction. Malaysia’s human rights record is not stellar and their own treatment of asylum seekers is not strong.
I think the idea of using Mexico as a staging location for asylum seekers is fraught with difficulty. Given that 1) Mexico is often the staging area for would be asylum seekers to come to the US, 2) that Mexico is in the midst of a violent drug war, and 3) has a less than stellar human rights record all suggest that it is not an ideal location for US processing of people smugglers. A better location if one really wants to go this route is to use one of the Caribbean islands. Their financial need is greater than Mexico’s. The politics for many Caribbean islands is easier to navigate than Mexico’s with its drug war woes. And I would add the final caveat that the question of Australia’s policy effectiveness has not really been empirically tested. The claim that the Howard government’s Pacific Policy was the deciding factor in curbing asylum seekers is politically convenient, but the truth may be more complex.
Hi Alan – All excellent points. Thank you for your comments. I agree that using Mexico (or any other country) in this way is not a great idea. I just fear that the Australian plan might catch on here. Hopefully, before we try anything like that, we will have a thorough study of what is happening over there. I don’t doubt that it will dissuade asylum seekers, but I do not know how we measure the human rights costs–not to mention the damage to international HR law–of outsourcing our asylum system.