polite_gandalf wrote on Sep 17^th, 2018 at 4:04pm:

People smugglers' new business model facilitated by the Libs:

1. People migrate from ASEAN country to Malaysia
2. People smuggler arranges for corrupt Malaysian officials issue new "Malaysian" passport
3. Liberals facilitate work visas in Australia
4. Illegal immigrant arrives by plane

Australia has over 64,000 illegal immigrants right now and this number is increasing. Malaysia is the country of origin of more illegal immigrants than any other country.

If the TPP goes ahead with Malaysian workers having access to open borders, stand by for the FLOOD of illegal immigrants!

And unlike the hyperbole about boats "restarting" under Labor, this threat is REAL.

Poor little Bammy just can't stand the heat and always turns nasty.


Bam wrote on Sep 17^th, 2018 at 10:48pm:

Bam wrote on Sep 17^th, 2018 at 10:55pm:


Dutton was saying cocaine usage had doubled in last two years,  how can that be with liberals strong border control 

Bit of Off Topic SPAM from the neurotic attention seeking Polly Waffle VIRUS.

Bam wrote on Sep 18^th, 2018 at 8:36am:

Bumping this thread to show how people smugglers operate now. They don't need boats any more. They now use planes.

SABRA LANE: The asylum debate in Australia is dominated by those who arrive on boats.

When it comes to those arriving on planes, there's been a more than tripling of their numbers - raising fears that people smugglers are gaming the refugee system.

In the past five years, 60,000 people - mostly from China and Malaysia - have come to Australia on temporary visas, and then applied for asylum.

Immigration Minister David Coleman says more than 90 per cent of their claims are rejected and they're returned home.

But that process can take years, and the arrivals can work on bridging visas.

A former senior immigration official says the traffickers are exploiting that time lag.

Abul Rizvi was deputy secretary of the Immigration Department until 2007.

He's speaking here with Eleanor Whitehead.

ABUL RIZVI: Most onshore asylum seeker applications come in in dribs and drabs. They come in from a wide variety of countries, and they have a reasonably high success rate.

When you have large numbers of asylum claims from just one or two countries and the vast majority are being refused, that is clear evidence that there is organisation behind this and that there are people doing this in order to profit.

ELEANOR WHITEHEAD: We've seen a large number of these claims are being lodged by people from China and Malaysia. Why those two countries?

ABUL RIZVI: The scam out of Malaysia is a long-standing one. I first encountered it almost 20 years ago.

And that appears to have re-emerged. It did re-emerge from time to time over the last 20 years, but it never got very large because we acted on it quite quickly.

The surprising thing here is that it has got very, very large over a relatively short period of time and that is the concern.

In respect of China, I get the impression that the people smugglers have decided, because it works so well out of Malaysia, they might as well give it a try out of China.

ELEANOR WHITEHEAD: So more than 60,000 people arriving by plane to lodge asylum claims afterwards since 2014. Is this a border crisis?

ABUL RIZVI: It is certainly very concerning in terms of numbers. If you look at it over a reasonable period of time, it is larger than the boat arrival issue that the Rudd/Gillard government had to deal with.

The other difference here, of course, is rather than individuals being in detention centres, they are in the community.

Because it is such a large continent, actually finding where they are will be a very substantial challenge.

ELEANOR WHITEHEAD: And how difficult is it for people smugglers to bring people in through this route? What kind of a process are they going through to get people here?

ABUL RIZVI: There is probably going to be a team of people involved. There will be people offshore who do the organising and bring people into the net, as it were. They will then arrange for them to get visitor visas via the electronic travel authority to Australia.

The individuals will probably be met just outside the airport and then taken to a place of work somewhere in Australia.

ELEANOR WHITEHEAD: And so do we know what happens to them when they are here? Are they being trafficked specifically for work purposes?

ABUL RIZVI: Yes, that's very much what it is about. It is about enabling the traffickers to bring the relevant individuals in, to be able to place them in jobs - usually very low-skilled jobs around Australia.

There are three main areas in which these people have traditionally worked: Firstly on farms; secondly in restaurants; and thirdly, in brothels.

If the processing times are not long, then the profitability of the exercise evaporates very quickly.

ELEANOR WHITEHEAD: So why is it that there are more people now arriving by plane?

ABUL RIZVI: These schemes pop up from time to time. We've traditionally been able to identify them very quickly.

By acting quickly, you make sure the numbers don't get too large and you are able to shut it down very quickly.

If the people smugglers can't make a profit, they don't keep running them.

The reason the numbers have got very large in this instance, it appears that Home Affairs has failed to act quickly enough - and I'm not even sure they're acting now. And the numbers have now become so large that actually taking action will be very, very expensive.

SABRA LANE: And that's Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of the Immigration Department. He was speaking there with Eleanor Whitehead.

A significant increase in the number of "plane people" seeking asylum in Australia has resulted in the country's longest refugee wait list in history, according to new figures from the United Nations' peak refugee agency.

Over 60,000 people had refugee applications before Australian government officials by the end of 2018 in what is a dramatic uptick from the nearly 30,000-long 2016 waitlist.

The new figures from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees add fire to a growing clash between Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and Kristina Keneally over the marked increase in so-called "plane people" arriving in Australia.

The last few years have seen a surge in people arriving in Australia by plane on legitimate tourist visas before later claiming asylum - 81,000 have done so in the past four years.

Roughly 90 per cent of these applications are denied. But in the several years it takes to process the claims, "plane people" are granted bridging visas that allow them to work in Australia.

The number of people in Australia on bridging visas increased from 107,000 in 2014 to 230,000 in 2019.

Senator Keneally said the tens of thousands of people arriving by plane to Australia before claiming asylum was a sign the people smuggler trade was evolving.

"The UNHCR report confirms a massive increase in the number of people who are in Australia seeking asylum has occurred under Peter Dutton's watch," she said. "In the face of this surge, Mr Dutton has presided over $300 million in budget cuts to weaken our border security."

"Even though it was Scott Morrison and Kevin Rudd's policies that stopped the boats, Peter Dutton loves to take the credit. But what credit does he take for the massive blowout in asylum seeker applications under his watch?"

Immigration Minister David Coleman said the record refugee application levels would not translate to more refugees.

"The government has capped the refugee intake at the current levels - unlike Labor which is proposing to increase the annual permanent refugee intake by 71 per cent."

"We won't be taking any advice on these issues from Labor, who completely lost control of our borders when they were in government."

The Home Affairs department stressed that only a quarter of a percent of all visitors sought Australia's protection.

"The Department continuously works to detect, disrupt and respond to fraud, pattern claims and other attempts to undermine the integrity of the immigration program," a spokesman said.

Immigration expert Mary Crock said the record wait list was quietly becoming a cause for concern.

"We have a larger number of people coming by plane and applying for asylum in Australia than ever in our history," the University of Sydney professor said.

"The very big backlog is due to the large numbers of people claiming asylum here. The other problem has been that they've cut funding to the department where they need to do the processing."

The UNHCR report also reveals that at 28,800, Australia received the 13th highest number of new asylum claims in 2018, as well as having the 13th highest number of pending asylum claims.

The surge means Australia is home to 1.7 percent of the world's refugee applications, but less than 0.1 percent of the world's refugees.

Most countries with larger refugee wait lists neighbour conflict zones. Turkey, bordering Syria, had 311,000 pending claims. Peru and Brazil, which are managing record immigration from civil unrest within Venezuela, had over 100,000 pending claims each.

At the top of the list was the United States with 719,000 refugee applications.

The figures come as the government revealed it would place higher priority on migrants from South America amid Venezuela's humanitarian crisis that will lead to hundreds more from the struggling socialist country settling in Australia.

In total, 3.4 million Venezuelans have fled the country and 341,800 Venuzuelans started seeking asylum in 2018.

70.8 million people were displaced worldwide in 2018, a 2.3 million increase compared to 2017.