August, 17 2012, 07:58am EDT

Australia: 'Pacific Solution' Redux
New Refugee Law Discriminatory, Arbitrary, Unfair, Inhumane
WASHINGTON
The Australian parliament's swift approval of an "offshore processing" law marks a shift in refugee policy that appears arbitrary and discriminatory on its face.
The Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011, passed by the Senate on August 16, 2012, and by the House the previous day, authorizes the transfer of asylum seekers who arrive by boat to remote Pacific islands, where they will remain indefinitely while their refugee claims are processed.
"Australia's new offshore processing law is a giant step backward in the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers," said Bill Frelick, refugee program director, "Australia again seeks to shunt desperate boat people to remote camps, perhaps for years, to punish them for arriving uninvited by sea."
The new law authorizes the government to transfer irregular migrants arriving by sea to the Pacific country of Nauru or to Manus Island, a remote malarial island that is part of Papua New Guinea. The legislation was rushed through the House and Senate just days after a government-appointed panel of experts issued a 22-point plan for addressing the issue of asylum seekers who arrive by boat.
While the legislation adopted the panel's recommendation to reinstate offshore processing, it did not include most of the panel's other recommendations, many of which were geared toward improving the capacity of Australia, transit countries, and source countries to provide asylum seekers with safe alternatives to irregular boat departures. The House rejected an amendment that would have set a one-year limit on the time asylum seekers could be held at the offshore sites.
The legislation only targets asylum seekers who arrive irregularly by boat. The claims of asylum seekers who arrive by air, even with improper documents, will continue to be processed while they remain in Australia. In most cases they will continue to be given "bridging visas," which allow them to live and work in the community.
"People escaping persecution often have good reasons not to ask the authorities for permission to travel before they flee," Frelick said. "To set up a system that discriminates against asylum seekers just because they arrive irregularly by boat flies in the face of both basic fairness and fundamental refugee protection principles."
In July 2011 Australia announced an "arrangement" to transfer irregular maritime asylum seekers to Malaysia, but Australia's High Court halted that plan, finding that the arrangement contravened the requirement in section 198A of Australia's Migration Act to provide access to effective procedures for asylum.
The court found that since Malaysia had not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention and had no domestic refugee law, it was not legally bound to provide access to effective asylum procedures and protection for refugees, and that the Australian minister for immigration and citizenship, therefore, could not send asylum seekers there.
After the High Court ruling, the Labor government was unable to win parliamentary support for legislation to amend the Migration Act to revive the Malaysia deal because the opposition Liberal Party preferred offshore processing at Nauru and Manus Island. But the government found common ground with the opposition this week when both agreed to enable offshore processing at Nauru and Manus Island by scrapping section 198A of the Migration Act, circumventing the High Court ruling.
The new law adds that "the designation of a country to be an offshore processing country need not be determined by reference to the international obligations or domestic law of that country."
Refugee processing was closed at Manus Island in 2004 and at Nauru in 2008 after the so-called "Pacific Solution" was criticized for being both costly and inhumane. Nauru Island became a party to the Refugee Convention in 2011, but has not yet demonstrated its capacity to provide effective asylum procedures and refugee protection, two additional criteria set forth by the High Court for compliance with section 198A. Papua New Guinea is also a party to the convention, but it has entered many reservations to it and also lacks a national refugee determination procedure.
Australia's prime minister, Julia Gillard, said that asylum seekers could be sent to Nauru as early as September where they would initially live in tents, and could be expected to wait there as long as five years for their applications to be processed.
Gillard's minister for immigration and citizenship, Chris Bowen, should not designate any countries for offshore processing, since the legislation, on its face, is discriminatory and is almost certain to result in arbitrary detention.
"Parliament may have skirted the High Court's ruling by cutting human rights protection from the Migration Act, but not the principle on which the ruling rested," Frelick said. "Should this plan go forward, Australia will be shirking its obligations under the Refugee Convention by punishing asylum seekers based on their arrival and indefinitely detaining them offshore where their rights won't be ensured."
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Trump Admin Terminating TPS for Haitians Slammed as Potential 'Death Sentence'
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Outrage over U.S. President Donald Trump's administration terminating Temporary Protected Status for around half a million Haitians, despite dire conditions in the Caribbean country, continued to mount on Saturday, with critics decrying the decision as harsh and hazardous.
"This is not just cruel—it's state-sanctioned endangerment," declared Haitian Bridge Alliance executive director Guerline Jozef.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said that the Trump administration "just decided to send thousands of innocent people who have been living and working here legally into imminent danger in Haiti. Trump will tear apart families, rip up communities, and leave businesses and nursing homes shorthanded. And no one will be safer."
Warren's fellow Massachusetts Democrat, Sen. Ed Markey, also weighed in on social media Saturday, arguing that "the Trump administration knows Haiti is not safe. This is a callous and shameful political decision that will have devastating human consequences. Saving lives will always be in the national interest."
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TPS was initially granted after an earthquake hit Haiti in 2010. The designation expires August 3, and Trump's Department of Homeland Security announced in a Friday statement that the termination will be effective on September 2. A DHS spokesperson said that "this decision restores integrity in our immigration system and ensures that Temporary Protective Status is actually temporary."
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While the DHS statement claims Haiti is safe, ignoring the deadly gang violence that has engulfed the country, the Trump administration's official notice has another focus, as some critics highlighted.
The notice states that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "has determined that termination of TPS for Haiti is required because it is contrary to the national interest to permit Haitian nationals (or aliens having no nationality who last habitually resided in Haiti) to remain temporarily in the United States."
The Miami Heraldreported that the U.S. Department of State currently "warns Americans not to travel to Haiti 'due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and limited healthcare.' This week, the agency also urged U.S. citizens to 'depart Haiti as soon as possible' or 'be prepared to shelter in place for an extended time period.'
According to the newspaper:
And just on Thursday, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau questioned the lack of action at the Organization of American States to address the crisis in Haiti.
"Armed gangs control the streets and ports of the capital city, and public order there has all but collapsed," he said. "While Haiti descends into chaos, the unfolding humanitarian, security, and governance crisis reverberates across the region."
The Miami Herald reached out to the State Department, asking the agency to explain its recommendations. A State Department spokesperson said the department does not comment on deliberations related to TPS determinations and referred questions to DHS.
"The administration is returning TPS to its original temporary intent," the spokesperson said. "TPS is a temporary protection, not a permanent benefit."
Noting the discrepancy between the two departments, Congressman Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D-Fla.) denounced the termination as "a deliberate act of cruelty."
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Also urging the administration to "reverse this inhumane decision immediately," Amnesty International USA said that "ending TPS for Haitians is cruel and dangerous, and a continuation of President Trump's racist and anti-immigrant practices. Haitian TPS holders have built lives here—working, raising families, and contributing to their communities—all while fleeing unsafe situations in Haiti."
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Ahead of a vote on Republicans' budget reconciliation package expected as soon as noon Saturday, U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee revived his effort to sell off public lands.
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Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, said in a Saturday morning statement that "the new version of Mike Lee's public lands sell-off is like cutting 'most' of the mercury out of your diet. The fact of the matter is that Mike Lee has spent the better part of a decade trying to privatize our public lands, and with his new power in the Senate, he's trying to push that agenda even further without public input, without transparency, and shame."
"Americans left, right, and center have come together with one voice to say these landscapes shouldn't be sold off to fund tax cuts for the uberwealthy—not now, not ever," Manuel added. "Congress needs to listen to their constituents, not billionaires and private developers, and keep the 'public' in public lands.”
A document from Lee states that his "amended proposal dramatically narrows the scope of lands to be sold for housing... in communities where it is desperately needed" in the U.S. West. The new version would exclude all Forest Service land and reduce the amount of Bureau of Land Management acres to be sold by half.
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Jane Fonda's climate-focused political action committee similarly stressed on social media Friday that "Lee is committed to including a massive public land sale provision in the Big Beautiful Bill. We need you to keep up the pressure and reach out to your senators today and demand they reject any new sales of public lands in this legislation."
And it's not just the land sales in the Friday night text of what critics call the "big, ugly bill." It also "creates new fees for renewable energy projects on public lands, and cuts royalty rates for oil, gas, and coal production on public lands," noted Sam Ricketts, co-founder of S2 Strategies, which is working to build a clean energy economy. "Make it make sense."
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Nearly all U.S. Senate Republicans and Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania on Friday evening blocked a resolution that reiterated Congress' authority to declare war and would have ordered President Donald Trump to stop taking military action against Iran without congressional approval.
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"I am disappointed that many of my colleagues are not willing to stand up and say Congress needs to be part of a decision as important as whether or not the U.S. should send our nation's sons and daughters to fight against Iran," Kaine added. "I will continue to do all I can to keep presidents of any party from starting wars without robust public debate by Congress."
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"We should not go to war against Iran," Sanders declared. He condemned Trump's recent attack on the Middle Eastern country as "unconstitutional," and argued that "diplomacy is a better path," as demonstrated by the nuclear deal in 2015—which Trump ultimately ditched during his first term.
Sanders also made the case that the U.S. should not be allied with "war criminal" Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who started the bombing of Iran and is wanted by the International Criminal Court for his mass slaughter of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
"Enough is enough," the senator said, noting that the U.S. gives Netanyahu's government billions of dollars in annual military aid. "It is beyond absurd that we continue to finance Israel's wars while neglecting the needs of our own people."
Meanwhile, in response to a question from a BBC reporter on Friday, Trump said that he would "without question, absolutely" consider bombing Iran again if intelligence suggested the country could enrich uranium to a level that concerned him.
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"We commend Sen. Kaine for his steadfast leadership in bringing this resolution, and the U.S. senators who stood on the right side of history today in safeguarding against yet another senseless war," he continued, noting the cease-fire between Israel and Iran that Trump announced earlier this week.
"Though a cease-fire is holding for now, the most certain way to guarantee peace is through an abandonment of war and a bold pursuit of sincere negotiations," Abdi added. "We urge our Members of Congress to change course, and urgently support a return to U.S.—Iran talks and a diplomatic pathway forward for both countries."
We took an oath to defend the Constitution - just like every Senator. Today, Republicans broke that oath. We WILL hold them accountable. (2/2)
— VoteVets (@votevets.org) June 27, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Also responding to the Friday development in a statement, Demand Progress senior policy adviser Cavan Kharrazian asserted that "today's vote sends a powerful message: There is a bipartisan movement to reject more war in the Middle East and prevent us from being unilaterally dragged into war before Congress and the American people can have their say."
"We thank Sen. Kaine for his leadership and Sen. Paul for his principled vote to stand up for the Constitution," Kharrazian said, urging the House of Representatives to pass a similar resolution led by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
Ahead of the Senate's vote, more than 41,000 people nationwide had signed a petition from the progressive group MoveOn Civic Action that calls on Congress to vote for the resolutions in both chambers.
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