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Immigration Daily News Immigration officers routinely trample on the dignity and rights of migrants, and its set to get worse
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Immigration officers routinely trample on the dignity and rights of migrants, and its set to get worse
The ABF has revealed that it routinely conducts operations like the one it abandoned on Friday in Melbourne. This is despite the fact that the Migration Act provides no scope for officers to demand visa details from people who happen to cross their path.
Section 188 of the Migration Act essentially states that identity documents may be requested when an ‘officer knows or reasonably suspects’ a person is a non-citizen.
How would an officer know or suspect that a person is non-citizen, without a tip-off? Racial profiling makes for easy targets. Perhaps even spotting someone reading a foreign language book, may be good enough. Such are the wide-powers under s 188. To make things worse, s189 allows the officer to arrest that person if the officer suspects that person is an unlawful citizen.
In explaining the failed Operation Fortitude, an ABF statement pointed out that, “Joint operations of this type are common and were previously conducted by Departmental immigration officers.” Surprisingly, there hasn’t been much discussion in the media about what may well be illegal operations whereby innocent people are confronted by these officers to give up their identity documents, where there may be no need to do so.
Leanne Weber ARC Future Fellow in Internal Border Policing at Monash University in an article in The Conversation says that ABF officers acting on suspicion by way of tip-offs from the police, do so with ‘little scrutiny’. This lack of scrutiny, Dr Weber says has led to the deportation of several overseas born Australians, including Vivian Solon and Cornelia Rau.
Dr Weber has conducted research on police methods in this matter in NSW and found that, “In the case of street stops, markers such as language, possession of foreign documents, outward appearance and seeming to be “out of place” were the reasons stated for making opportunistic immigration checks.”
Her research indicates that, “Just over one in ten immigration status checks made via the system [Immigration Status Service database] confirmed the individual to be unlawfully present. So, nearly 90% of checks were made on lawfully present individuals, including citizens.”
Given all this, how the ABF’s illegal and reckless approach in wielding powers under the Migration Act can promote its objective of a “secure and cohesive society” is baffling.
What now has becoming deeply concerning is a Fairfax news report that an army of ABF officers, expected to eventually number between 5000 and 6000, are now being trained to enforce these s188 and s189 powers with weapons.
Comments
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Tuesday, 01 September 2015http://www.border.gov.au/AccessandAccountability/Documents/FOI/FA140800326.PDF#search=overstay
Estimated number of Unlawful Non-Citizens as at 30 June 2014 = 62,100
USA 3rd with 5,420 and UK 4th with 3,660
Unlawful Non‐Citizens (UNC's)** by Length of Overstay as at 30 June 2014
10 or more years 23,420 37.71% -
Wednesday, 02 September 2015
NOTHING BAFFLING... LOOK AT THE HALF WITS WHO ARE RUNNING THINGS. Makes you want to cry to pay taxes to them!
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Thursday, 03 September 2015
Interesting comments. How would you run it differently?
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Wednesday, 02 September 2015
It makes sense to target at US/UK nationals as they together as a group account for more UNCs than any other country alone. China would only come second and Malaysia third.
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Thursday, 03 September 2015
The only problem with targeting US/UK/Irish citizens is that they are Caucasian, and I consider that Border Farce looks at racial aspects, eg, Asians, south Asians.
It's a joke in a 'free' society.
It also highlights how incompetent these people are!!!!!
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