Asylum-seekers arrive by plane, not boat

EVERY day, at least 13 asylum-seekers enter Australia through airports, representing 30 times the number of boat people that are supposedly "flooding" across our maritime borders.

A total of 4768 "plane people" - more than 96 per cent of applicants for refugee status - arrived by aircraft in 2008 on legitimate tourist, business and other visas compared with 161 who arrived by boat during the same period, the Sunday Telegraph reports.



And plane people are much less likely than boat people to be genuine refugees, with only about 40-60 per cent granted protection visas, compared with 85-90 per cent of boat people who are found to be genuine refugees.



In 2007-08, 3987 claims were received and 1930 of these were approved.



But whereas boat people are detained on Christmas Island while their claims are processed, plane people live in the community and they are allowed to work under policy changes introduced by the Rudd government.



Experts say few Australians understand that the boat people represent just a small fraction of our refugee intake - and these asylum-seekers are unfairly vilified by "expedient" politicians.



Exact plane-people figures for 2009 are not yet available, but an Immigration Department spokesman said the figure was likely to have increased at a similar rate to that of boat arrivals, which grew from 161 to 1799 since last year, in response to increased pressures within the region, including the end of civil war in Sri Lanka, which has seen many ethnic Tamils fleeing persecution.



An analysis by The Sunday Telegraph of immigration records shows that Sri Lankans represented more than 28 per cent of "plane people" who successfully applied for protection visas in 2007-08, followed by Chinese (26 per cent), Iraqis (14 per cent) and Pakistanis (7.6 per cent). Of the plane people found to be non-genuine refugees, many are Indonesian, Malaysian, Indian and Chinese.



Chinese represent 30 per cent of plane people who apply for refuge, followed by Sri Lankans (8 per cent), Malaysians, Indonesians, Iraqis and then Indians.



Australia will take 13,750 refugees through its humanitarian program in 2009-10, an increase of 250 on last year.



It is expected that Sri Lankans will represent an increased proportion of that intake, which in previous years has been dominated by Burmese, Iraqis, Afghans, Sudanese, Liberians, Congolese and Burundians.



Politicians' "expedient obsession" with boat people is clouding the truth about Australia's refugee flows, according to migration law expert Professor Mary Crock, of Sydney University Law School.



"It's a great mystery why people get upset about boats -- and it's disappointing that our Prime Minister is playing to the old politics," Professor Crock said.



"We have a small number of arrivals and the ones who arrive by boat are nearly always genuine refugees."



