Boat trade ends and Sri Lanka now legal source of migrants to Aussie
April 22, 2014 08:16 pm
Cooperation
between Sri Lanka and Australia on fighting people-smuggling has reversed
migration patterns, with thousands more Sri Lankans arriving as skilled workers
while the flow of illegal boats from the South Asian nation, which peaked at
tens of thousands, has now stopped.
The
number of Sri Lankans who became Australian citizens jumped 74 per cent to 3456
last year, while there were 4987 Sri Lankans who came to Australia legally with
visas for work and for family reunions.
Immigration
Minister Scott Morrison said yesterday the rising trends of legal migration
were “a guide to what you would continue to expect” as he guaranteed 4000
humanitarian places would be available for people in refugee camps around the
world, with high demand from Africa and the Middle East. “The suggestion that
the only way you could get to Australia is on a leaky boat is not true,’’ Mr
Morrison said after addressing a Sri Lanka-Australia security conference on
transnational crime in Canberra.
“If
people have a legitimate reason for coming then they can.’’
Mr
Morrison said the last illegal boat carrying Sri Lankans was months ago and all
79 on board were sent back to Sri Lanka. The Immigration Minister said stopping
the arrival of illegal boats during the past four months had allowed the
government to increase the number of places for humanitarian migration from 500
under Labor to 4000 a year.
Responding
to the disclosure in The Australian yesterdaythat, on the eve of her move to
topple Kevin Rudd as prime minister in 2010, Julia Gillard thought the “loss of
control of the borders” was the biggest problem Labor faced, Mr Morrison said
it was more than four months since the last successful illegal boat arrival on
December 19. “(It) didn’t matter if it was Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard or any
of the four immigration ministers that they had, they just had no answers,” he
said.
“Now,
in just over six months, we have ensured that we are stopping the boats and we
are being true to our promises, we are doing exactly what we said we would do
and it is having exactly the effect we said it would have.”
Co-operation
with Sri Lanka was one of a series of policies that have helped the Abbott
government “stop the boats” including turning boats back to Indonesian waters,
offshore processing in PNG, temporary visas and the moves by Indonesia and
Malaysia to stop entry to their countries without visas.
UN
High Commissioner for Refugees figures released last week showed that between
late December and the end of last month, the number of asylum-seekers
registering had fallen from 100 people daily to about 100 people weekly.
“We
must apply the same focus and co-operation that we have achieved on
people-smuggling to the broader challenge of transnational crime,” Mr Morrison told
representatives of Defence, army, navy and customs of Australia and Sri Lanka
yesterday.
Mr
Morrison said Sri Lanka and Australia were working together to disrupt
people-smuggling syndicates, “to deliver strong messages that Australia will
not resettle anyone who arrives illegally by boat, and to improve capacity to
address people-smuggling and improve border management”.
“The
Sri Lankan authorities are committed to combating people-smuggling and continue
to disrupt people-smuggling ventures all over the island,” he said.
“We
are very grateful for the enormous efforts of the Sri Lanka Navy, the Sri Lanka
Police Force and other law enforcement and prosecuting agencies.”
Mr
Morrison later told The Australian: “Our more recent experience over the issue
of people-smuggling, which has been very deep and very close, has opened the
door to the broader opportunities of the relationship. Significant numbers of
Sri Lankans are becoming Australian citizens.”
He
said the total of 3456 Sri Lankans who became Australian citizens in 2012-13
represented a 74 per cent increase from 2011-12, the Australian reports.