Podcast: the detail
Only a very small number of asylum seekers arrive in New Zealand each year – and less than half of them succeed in applying for refugee status. The Detail asks why are they treated differently from refugees who enter through the quota system?
Asylum seekers are on the rise again as borders reopen around the world, with shocking stories of people escaping war or persecution and trapped in a painful limbo that can drag on for years.
That is, if they survive dangerous boat trips, time in overcrowded prison cells and camps where lawlessness reigns.
Of the 4.6 million asylum seekers identified by the United Nations, only a few hundred come to Aotearoa each year and less than half receive refugee status.
“It’s just a small drop in the ocean,” said University of Auckland professor Jay Marlowe, co-director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Refugee Studies.
“We’re talking about 0.001 percent of the world’s asylum seekers who come through the New Zealand system.”
Although the numbers are small, they do not receive the same treatment as refugees who come to New Zealand through the quota system.
“The idea that we would actually support them to pursue these claims, which they are legally entitled to, is not a radical question. It is really about the principle of fairness and to prevent them from falling into poverty.”
And revelations that 158 asylum seekers have been caught in visa fraud show that New Zealand is not the perfect haven.
The detail talk to RNZ’s immigration reporter Gill Bonnett about how she came across the scam – in which people claimed to be at risk from loan sharks – and how it was discovered by immigration officials.
More will be revealed about the case when it goes to court – an interpreter faces five charges and all but two of the asylum seekers have had their applications withdrawn or rejected.
Bonnett explains how she saw many similar stories crop up in appeals to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal. She realized that Immigration New Zealand had already joined the dots and submitted to the tribunal that she believed there was a group trying to exploit the refugee system.
It is not clear at this stage whether those who got caught up in it were aware of the scam before arriving in the country, or whether it was a well-organized plan.
“These were potentially very vulnerable people who came here with the belief that they could work and potentially repay a debt,” she says.
Marlowe says asylum seekers are often tainted with stories of false claims.
“Even people whose applications aren’t successful doesn’t necessarily mean they’re actually trying to play the system. It’s just that they haven’t reached that high threshold yet,” he says.
Marlowe co-authored a report called Safe start fair futurecalling for all refugees to be treated equally and fairly.
He explains how quota refugees differ from asylum seekers, who become refugees if their application is granted.
“For many people, the refugee process is a deeply traumatizing experience, one that is sometimes characterized by a culture of mistrust. That’s not to say the whole system is like that, but for many people the experiences can be very harrowing, very long interview processes, the feel that they are not believed.”
Last month, an independent review criticized Immigration New Zealand’s detention policy as inhumane and contrary to New Zealand’s values.
It determined that long-term detention is “wrong on every level” and called for a change in the law that would mean asylum seekers could be held in prison if they arrive on false documents, are considered a security risk or make a claim while illegally here. .
Immigration New Zealand says that from 2015 to 2020, 86 of the 2,655 asylum seekers who arrived here were detained. It says that no asylum seekers have been detained for two years.
Marlowe says his report has also received positive response from the government, but now is the time for action.
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