Bizarre refugee swap with US coming under fire

Letter from Sydney:The process of seeking asylum has just got weirder because of an Australian/ American arrangement that will see the countries swap refugees with each other.

Advocacy groups found themselves checking what day in April it was following the announcement that people trying to get into Australia would be swapped for Cubans trying to enter the US.

But it was no April Fool's joke and already two Chinese men have been flown to the US at a cost of Aus$45,000 (€27,000) in air fares for the 35 seats that had to be bought to provide an on-board exclusion zone. A party of six police, immigration and medical staff accompanied the men, who had been in Australia for seven years.

The scheme will see each country swap up to 200 unwanted refugees a year. Next up from Australia are expected to be 83 Sri Lankan Tamils imprisoned on the Micronesian island of Nauru.

The reason they are on Nauru and not Australia is the so-called "Pacific solution" - where asylum seekers are processed in offshore centres.

However, the Nauruan government recently placed a six-month time limit on the processing of Australia-bound boat people.

The US, in its first swap, is due to deport about 200 Cubans and Haitians from the Guantánamo Bay naval base to Sydney.

Immigration minister Kevin Andrews said Australia would only accept refugees if their claims were found to be genuine.

"This is formalising an arrangement with the United States because they have a similar problem [to us] . . . The United States might say to us, 'Would you consider settling some of these people?' and we would give consideration to it.

"Equally, we might say we have people that have sought to illegally enter Australia who have a refugee claim and we could say to the United States: 'Would you consider settling them?'"

The leader of the opposition, Kevin Rudd, spoke for many when he said: "I am struggling with where all that goes in terms of the logic."

Prime minister John Howard said every step Australia took to show its strict border policy "will resonate around the region and will drive home the point that this country will not compromise in relation to illegal immigration".

But Labor Party immigration spokesman Tony Burke said the move was astonishing. "If you are in one of the refugee camps around the world, there is no more attractive destination than to think you can get a ticket to the USA. What John Howard is doing is sending a message to the world that says if you can get a people smuggler to get you as far as Christmas Island, then John Howard will pick up the fare to New York." Christmas Island - part of Australia but 2,360km offshore in the Indian Ocean - is a favoured target for people smugglers.

Mr Rudd suggested the refugee swap arrangement was merely a way of fudging the figures and looking tough on immigration in an election year.

Australian Greens senator Kerry Nettle said it was bizarre that "the government is now prepared to take Cubans who are overwhelmingly economic migrants in exchange for Sri Lankans who are refugees in fear of their lives".

Describing the arrangement as a "dark and murky" political fix, Pamela Curr of Melbourne's Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said: "They're our responsibility and this policy is shredding the refugee convention . . . This is not a container load of washing machines that we've decided to reject. This is human beings."

Bill Frelick, refugee policy director at the US-based Human Rights Watch, echoed her point. "Refugees are human beings, not products that countries can broker and trade. The United States and Australia have signed a deal that bargains with lives and flouts international law."

It is not surprising a situation so peculiar and unprecedented was mined for comedic gold. It is just surprising where.

An editorial in the august pages of the Sydney Morning Herald dubbed the arrangement "the Cuban solution" and suggested Australia would do better out of it as the Cubans would increase Australia's sporting prowess in baseball, basketball, volleyball and amateur boxing, whereas the Sri Lankans tend only to be good at cricket, at which Australia is already the best in the world.

Time will tell if a few months in an Australian camp on Nauru is considered a reasonable price for a US green card.