New York Times Looks at Australia’s Harmful Approach to Refugees

In a March 10 story in the New York Times, Natasha Frost details the harmful legacy of Australia’s approach to refugees.

“Australia’s unyielding approach to refugees — which includes a system of indefinite mandatory detention for people suspected to be in the country unlawfully — is among the strictest in the world,” she writes.

Refugees who successfully make it to Australia “have been held for years on end at detention centers run by private contractors on nearby islands,” Frost notes.

Australia’s approach to refugees appears “to be the playbook for proposed legislation in Britain that would give the Home Office a “duty” to remove nearly all migrants who cross the English Channel on small boats.”

“The main thing they have in common is in seeking to criminalize, almost, asylum, or at least to undermine the right to an institution of asylum,” ssad Michelle Foster, a professor at Melbourne Law School and the director of the Peter McMullin Center on Statelessness, of Britain’s and Australia’s policies.