#IAmWatching Manus

From Behrouz Boochani's Twitter: men at the new camps facing long waits for water and food.

'I cannot leave my neighbour hungry': support for refugees from priest and major on Manus (GA, 23 November 2017)

"How is it possible that this is what’s required to get the truth out?"

Refugee Update

You can donate to the Australian Red Cross to help refugees and asylum seekers in crisis in the community.

Border Force tells Nauru refugees to separate from family if they want to settle in US (GA, 6 December 2017)

Two beliefs struggle in my mind: the belief that what is being done to asylum seekers inside and outside Australia is being done because they aren't white; the belief that governments who set aside the law for some people will set it aside for all of us if it suits them. Tipping the balance in the direction of the latter: US once locked up white Australian immigrants in 'horror' camps akin to Manus and Nauru (GA, 20 November 2017)


Facts and figures (note the dates on some of these):

Asylum seekers and refugees: what are the facts? (Parliamentary Library research report, March 2015).

Fact sheets, statistics, etc, from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

Immigration Department's asylum seeker data breach costs taxpayers nearly $1m in legal fees (ABC, 13 July 2017) | Immigration investigation judged 'unfair' after asylum seeker data breach (SMH, 18 September 2015) | Scott Morrison ensured asylum seeker data breach probe failed, court finds (GA, 18 September 2017)

Australia has spent $9.6bn on asylum seeker policy in four years, says report  (GA, 12 September 2016) | Transfield's $1.1b offshore processing contract farce (The Saturday Paper, 17-23 September 2016): "A blistering audit of the offshore detention program reveals a system defined by untendered contracts and preferential deals raises billions of dollars’ worth of questions." | Missing documents, unskilled staff, poor value for money: Auditor-General lashes immigration detention (SMH, 14 September 2016) | Offshore detention cost taxpayers $5bn in four years – and asylum seekers remain in limbo (GA, 18 July 2017)

Scott Morrison may gloat but asylum seekers' boats haven't really stopped (GA, 11 December 2014). "For all the slogans and military operations, over 54,000 people have boarded boats across the Indian Ocean this year [2014], with around 20,000 in just the two months of October and November."

Meanwhile, overseas:

As Germany struggles to form a government, asylum rules emerge as a key dividing line (WP, 2 December 2017). Temporary protection visas and family reunification. On a more positive note: German pilots refuse to carry out deportations (Deutsche Welt, 5 December 2017). "At the same time, refugees are appealing their deportation orders in record numbers - and winning."

Supreme Court Allows Full Enforcement of Trump Travel Ban (Snopes, 4 December 2017).

Trump casts immigrants as dangerous criminals, but the evidence shows otherwise (WP, 24 March 2017) "... immigrants, including those here illegally, commit crimes at lower rates than do native-born Americans."