There are a “record” 100,000 people who have sought asylum onshore who remain in Australia including 72,875 whose claims were refused who are yet to be deported.
Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of the immigration department, said there is “no simple solution” to the policy failure, which leaves people vulnerable to labour market exploitation.
According to home affairs department statistics, 1,725 people claimed protection onshore in February, taking the number of such claims since the Albanese government was elected to 12,859.
In opposition Labor complained that from 2014 to 2019 about 80,000 asylum seekers arrived by plane, accusing the Coalition of having lost control of Australia’s borders.
Rizvi said that since Australia’s borders reopened in November 2021 “applications are up very steeply” and “the backlog has increased rapidly”.
The statistics show there are now 27,342 people waiting for refugee status determinations, and a further 72,875 people who “were not granted a final protection visa that have yet to be deported”.
“There are 100,000 asylum seekers living in the country,” Rizvi said. “We’ve never been here before.”
According to separate Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) statistics, 39,625 people are seeking a review of their asylum claims, which Rizvi said is also a “new record”.
Rizvi said that most applicants retain work rights while they wait for a primary decision and AAT appeal, but the more than 32,000 who have been refused at both stages lack work rights and “are not leaving the country”.
“While the labour market remains strong … most will be able to get jobs unlawfully, and they’ll get a wage,” he said.
“But if the labour market weakens … they increasingly have to accept jobs with more exploitative wages.
“They struggle to find accommodation in a tight housing market, many of them are living on streets already.”
Rizvi said there is no easy solution, with amnesties creating “an incentive for more people to do the same”.
The shadow immigration minister, Dan Tehan, said “almost 13,000 asylum seekers have arrived by plane since Labor was elected”.
“This influx of asylum seekers under Labor is just more proof that the government is all hat and no cattle when it comes to immigration,” he said.
“When Labor was in opposition they labelled the arrival of asylum seekers by plane a crisis, but now the problem is getting worse on their watch and they have no plan to deal with it.
“Labor has been complaining about asylum seekers arriving by plane since 2019, where is their plan to stop it?”
A government spokesperson said under the Coalition “more than 140,000 people arrived in Australia and lodged onshore protection visa applications”, leaving a “backlog in the protection visa program”.
“The Albanese government is focused on resolving this issue in methodical way, in accordance with our obligations set out in the refugee convention.”
In December the Albanese government announced it will abolish the AAT and set up a new merits review tribunal.
It committed $63.4m over two years to appoint 75 extra members to deal with the backlog of cases across all its divisions, which includes decisions on social security and the NDIS.
Labor has also announced a plan to give 3,000 citizens of Pacific Island neighbours permanent residency visas allocated by lottery, which Rizvi said the government “may argue creates an incentive for Pacific workers here temporarily not to apply for asylum”.
