Asylum seekers have to pass stringent tests to get protection in Australia.
THIS week, a longstanding myth about refugees crept back in recast form into the political discourse of this country. The myth goes something like this: the only genuine refugees are frail, dishevelled, destitute, and generally emanate from the squalor of refugee camps.
Some of the more extreme extensions of the myth peddled recently suggest that genuine refugees cannot dress well, have financial means, listen to iPods, or even take multivitamins; and that evidence of such attributes is a sign that the asylum seekers are cynical, fraudulent ''economic'' opportunists unworthy of our protection.
Such stereotypes are not just mistaken, they are also potentially very damaging to those who might need our protection from brutality.
Refugees come from all walks of life and all corners of the globe. While many live in destitution in refugee camps, it's crucial to recognise that many do not. Refugee status transcends class, social standing, occupation, education, means and geography. The need for refugee protection is not confined to the weak or poor.
Each year, my organisation represents refugees with backgrounds as varied as those who hold high political office, prominent sportspeople, farmers, businessmen, urban unemployed and homeless, academics, factory workers, university students and military officials.
History abounds with examples of prominent people forced to flee to safety, such as Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. On our own shores, refugees include scientist Sir Gustav Nossal, businessman Frank Lowy and tennis champion Jelena Dokic. The common, dark thread in all cases is the real prospect of the person facing persecution in their homeland.
As the politics of asylum is resurrected inexorably with the recent increase in boat arrivals, it is critical that the community has a proper understanding of what the law requires in relation to refugee status - the test that is used to examine the claims for refugee protection. The fact is that only certain types of claims fit the strict legal requirements to qualify a person for protection in Australia.
This test, derived from the United Nations Refugees Convention, requires that the person have a well-founded fear of being persecuted in their homeland. There must be objective evidence revealing a real - not just remote - risk of future harm. And the targeting of the person must be motivated by specific civil or political reasons - namely, because of the person's race, religion, political beliefs, social group or nationality.
The Refugees Convention is essentially egalitarian; refugee protection is not about class, and nowhere in the treaty is there any mention of a financial means test. There's a good reason for this - the focus is on whether the person will suffer serious harm, not their relative wealth.
All asylum seekers - whether boat arrivals held on Christmas Island or those on the mainland - are subjected to a rigorous examination process under which their individual claims for refugee status are tested against these laws and the objective evidence about the human rights situation in their homeland. More than half of those who apply for refugee status here fail. (Most of these cases involve asylum seekers already in the community on the mainland, rather than those held on Christmas Island who have arrived by boat.)
But they don't fail because of what they wear, what they own, or whether they take multivitamins; they're rejected because their claims are found not to fit the legal requirements or to lack credibility.
The peddling of the ''economic refugee'' myth has been accompanied by an equally bewildering and baseless questioning of the very high approval rates for asylum seekers arriving by boat in the past year. Well over 90 per cent of those assessed on Christmas Island have been recognised as refugees and then granted protection in Australia. These figures are hardly surprisingly. Most of these recent boat arrivals are from places such as Afghanistan or Sri Lanka, where people from a range of backgrounds face grave human rights abuse on a daily basis.
People fleeing from these dangers who may have some financial means are unlikely to be fraudulent or undeserving, as has been alleged. In fact, such allegations are counter-intuitive given that possession of some resources may actually be necessary sometimes to be in a position to escape to a place where protection can be sought.
The peddling of such myths about refugees has the real potential to mislead the public about the asylum seekers arriving on our shores. This distortion risks trivialising, if not denying, grave abuses and trauma faced by refugees fleeing here. It hauntingly recalls the rhetoric of political leaders in the recent past. This rhetoric was used as a potent propaganda tool to perpetrate a suite of policies that constituted the most extensive, harsh and needlessly harmful anti-asylum system in the Western world. Fortunately, some of the more destructive of these policies have been or are about to be repealed.
In the face of a worldwide increase in asylum seeker numbers - which Australia is witnessing with the recent rise in boat arrivals - there are undoubtedly testing times to come. In confronting this challenge, it's crucial that the Australian community, including political leaders, understand the real predicaments that asylum seekers from a variety of backgrounds face and the comprehensive and objective tests they must pass before they are allowed to stay as refugees in Australia. Distorted and baseless descriptions of asylum seekers do nothing to further this important aim.
David Manne is co-ordinator of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre Inc.
