Australia is to reintroduce a controversial temporary visa system to deal with a huge backlog of asylum seekers, it has been announced.
Currently, would-be refugees are dealt with in offshore detention centres in Papua New Guinea and the tiny South Pacific island nation of Nauru, but some 30,000 who arrived before the policy was set are awaiting processing in Australian detention centres.
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said that the Temporary Protection Visas (TPV), which were introduced under former Prime Minister John Howard and abolished in 2008, would address those people without providing inducements to people smugglers.
‘TPVs will provide refugees with stability and a chance to get on with their lives, while at the same time guaranteeing that people smugglers do not have a permanent protection visa product to sell to those who are thinking of travelling illegally to Australia,’ he said.We are stopping the boats, with just one venture having arrived this year, and we are now seeking to resolve the backlog of 30,000 illegal maritime arrivals IMAs who arrived under the previous government by restoring TPVs,’ he pointed out.