CATHOLIC agencies are concerned that children of asylum seekers are still in detention at Woomera and that some of them have been there for more than two years.
Executive director of Centacare Catholic Family Services in Adelaide, Dale West, said that was the real issue for Australia to address, not reports that thousands of people who had failed in their bid for asylum had absconded to live illegally in the community.
Revelations about the number of absconders attracted national media attention on December 14.
The Immigration Department has reported that, of the 13,737 (as at June this year) who had absconded over the past five years, since 1999 only 263 had escaped from detention centres.
But Mr West said these figures tended to take the focus away from the real issue of concern – children in detention centres.
He said that, regardless of what the parents had done or how they came to be in detention at Woomera, ‘having children aged four, eight, 10 and 12 years – kids from one family – being there for two years is outrageous’.
Director of the Australian Catholic Migrant and Refugee Office, Fr John Murphy, said the figures on failed asylum seekers in the community did not surprise him.
‘At any given time in Australia, we have about 50,000 people here illegally,’ Fr Murphy said.
He said the Church was sometimes asked to represent people, who were not in detention centres, in their bid for asylum, and to help put their case to the Immigration Minister when they had exhausted all other channels.
But the people the Church was publicly concerned about were the ones in detention centres and those released on protection visas.
Catholic lobby group, Australian Political Ministry Network (PolMin), said asylum seekers, the vast majority of whom were not those held in detention centres, were absconding because of flaws in the Migration Act 1958.
The Melbourne Catholic Commission for Justice, Development and Peace (CCJDP) said Immigration Department statistics showed that many asylum seekers were peacefully living in the community for years while their claims were assessed.
CCJDP executive officer, Marc Purcell, said: ‘The statistics show that there are two times as many people living in the community seeking asylum, than those being held in detention centres.
‘These statistics, which cover a four-year period, reveal that people have been living peacefully in the community while their claims are assessed, with the full knowledge and support of the Government.’
Mr Purcell said there were 8110 people living in the community in 2000/1 compared with 4911 in detention (including reception and processing centres).
‘We ought to be processing kids and families in the community with the other asylum seekers instead of dangerous places like detention centres,’ he said.
