Australian immigration and asylum
Latest news affecting Australian immigration and asylum from the Guardian
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Australia's tough asylum laws have been challenged in the high court, which found yesterday that the government was obliged to take in refugees facing persecution in their homeland.
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More than 9,500 temporary refugees could be allowed to remain in Australia, in a softening of the country's hardline immigration policy, announced yesterday.
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A man accused of organising a people-smuggling voyage which led to the deaths of more than 350 asylum seekers is to go on trial in Brisbane this week.
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An eight-year-old Iranian refugee whose plight ignited a bitter immigration row in Australia launched a civil suit yesterday against the government, claiming that he suffered severe mental health problems caused by his time in detention.
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Protests at new 'more humane' detention centre as boatload of asylum-seekers heads in.
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The case of one Iranian asylum seeker raises questions about how Australia's refugee review tribunal makes its decisions, writes David Fickling.
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Politicians and refugee advocates appealed for calm yesterday after violence and arson attacks swept through Australian migrant detention centres.
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The Australian government's culture of secrecy means the brutal conditions of asylum seekers are routinely covered up, writes David Fickling.
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A severely traumatised Afghan boy, whose family were all killed during massacres in Mazar-i-Sharif, has been denied asylum in Australia, says David Fickling.
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The daughter of the Australian immigration minister Philip Ruddock has left the country because of her father's policies, she said in a television interview broadcast last night.
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An asylum seeker released after six months in a detention centre only to be handed a A$26,000 (£10,000) bill for his time inside has taken the Australian government to court.
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The Australian prime minister, John Howard, accused political activists and lawyers opposed to his hardline asylum policy, of exploiting two refugee children for propaganda purposes.
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Human rights organisations accused the British government of being heartless yesterday after it rejected a plea for help from two children seeking asylum at its consulate in Melbourne.
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Activists helped a group of 35 asylum seekers facing repatriation escape from a desert detention camp yesterday.
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United Nations officials today strongly criticised Australia's mandatory detention of asylum seekers, describing the Howard government's policy of incarceration as an abuse of human rights.
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Howard's way is the wrong way
Patrick BarkhamComment: Australia's asylum seeker strategy should not be a model for Blair, writes Patrick Barkham, the Guardian's Australia correspondent 2000-2002. -
As Britain offers an increasingly sour welcome to asylum seekers, Australia presents a warning of where such attitudes lead. It operates some of the most oppressive immigration policies anywhere - locking up "illegals" indefinitely with a regime that has driven many to suicide. Patrick Barkham talks to those who have bitter experience of the remote Woomera detention centre.
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The Australian government yesterday announced that it would pay Afghan families up to A$10,000 (£3,800) to return home in an effort to keep asylum seekers out of the country.
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A Catholic human rights group today accused the Australian government of attempting to cover up incidents of self-abuse among asylum seekers being held in detention centres in the outback.
A lesson from Oz