The new Australian migration amendment bill, which was introduced by Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on November 7, passed on Friday. It proposes the removal of non-citizens from the nation, including the payment to third countries to do so and the establishment of authorities to seize cell phones while they are in custody.
According to The Guardian, the coalition agreed on Wednesday to pass all three of the Albanese government’s contentious migration bills. The legal act will empower the government stricter scrutiny of protection visa applications and limited protections on new powers to ban travelers from entire countries.
The shadow home affairs and immigration ministers, James Paterson called on the Albanese government to be “transparent” about which countries might be paid to receive non-citizens from Australia, but said that such deals should “happen immediately”. The Greens have called the deportation bill a “Trump-style travel ban” because it grants the Australian government the authority to prohibit new visa applications from nations that do not accept involuntary removals from Australia.
Over 80,000 People Could be Deported
These are the number of people who could be deported to third countries that paid to take them, according to Labor’s new bill, which has been compared to the UK’s failed Rwanda deportation plan.
The majority of the 80,000 could return home, officials emphasized, and thousands of them chose to do so. Approximately 4,452 individuals on bridging visas to enable them to make “acceptable arrangements to depart Australia,” 1,179 individuals in immigration or community detention, and 246 individuals released as a result of the high court’s decision that indefinite immigration detention is illegal are the most likely possible targets.
The Australian Human Rights Commission, the Human Rights Law Center, the Refugee Council, the Law Council, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees all voiced their opposition.
Josephine Langbien, associate legal director of the Human Rights Law Centre, told the Senate inquiry the bill allowed people removed to be separated from their families “sending them to permanent exile in third countries against their will”.
Earlier, the Greens’ immigration spokesperson, David Shoebridge, said “the Albanese government is working hand-in-hand with Peter Dutton (the leader of the opposition Liberal Party ) to push through the most extreme migration legislation since the White Australia policy”.
Kon Karapanagiotidis, stated that it will file a challenge “as a matter of priority,” claiming that parts of the bill that would impose curfews and ankle bracelets on people released from immigration detention were a “attack on the separation of powers.” According to Karapanagiotidis, the bill gave Australia the authority to send non-citizens, including refugees, anywhere in the world, replicating the UK’s “failed Rwanda plan.”