Government delayed asylum report amid surge linked to visa schemes

The Home Affairs Department held back a key asylum report until after the Election, raising questions as visa-linked applications soared across multiple nationalities. Dr Abul Rizvi reports.

THE DEPARTMENT of Home Affairs (DHA) waited 13 months after the end of 2023-24 before publishing the onshore asylum report for that program year — around three months after the May Election. It had published the counterpart offshore humanitarian program report well before the Election and it would have had the data to publish the onshore asylum report 12 months earlier.

But why? Perhaps we can tell from the contents of the delayed report.

The first and most obvious reason for the delay may be that in 2023-24, there were some 25,210 asylum applications, second only to the 2017-18 all-time record of 27,931 when Peter Dutton and Mike Pezzullo were asleep to the biggest labour trafficking in Australian history.

The nationalities of asylum applications in 2023-24 were very different to those in 2017-18, when around 67 per cent of applications were from just two nationalities — Malaysia and China.

In 2023-24, the mix of nationalities was both very different and much broader. But five of the top ten nationalities jump out.

Firstly, the top nationality in 2023-24 was Vietnam with 3,389 onshore asylum applications, up from 1,123 in 2022-23 and 576 in 2021-22. There was no significant political change in Vietnam that would have driven such a large jump in asylum applications, with the asylum grant rate remaining negligible.

There was an increase in visitors, but that was broadly in line with the increase in visitors from most nations after the pandemic.

A more likely explanation is a large increase in offshore student visa grants to Vietnamese nationals over the period from November 2022 to January 2024. These grants were mainly to students in higher education, vocational education and training (VET) and schools. There were very few offshore student visa grants over this period to students in the English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS — short English language courses) sector. It would be unusual for school students to apply for asylum.

Because of the usual length of higher education courses and, to a lesser degree, VET courses, it may not have been primarily students who drove up the asylum applications from Vietnamese nationals.

Another possible explanation is the MOU signed with Vietnam as part of Nationals' leader David Littleproud’s Agriculture Visa. While the new Labor Government abolished this visa (the visa would have been an immigration policy disaster), it had no choice but to proceed for at least one year with the MOU with Vietnam.

It is quite likely that a significant number of these agricultural workers applied for asylum in 2023-24.

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The second nationality with a very large surge in asylum applications was from the Philippines, with 1,078 applications in 2023-24 compared to 354 in 2022-23. A likely explanation is Philippine nationals studying in the VET sector. Primary offshore student visa grants to Philippine nationals doing VET courses increased from 5,477 in 2021-22, to 15,891 in 2022-23 and 13,165 in 2023-24.

DHA then clamped down on this in 2024-25 with only 2,441 primary offshore student visa grants to Philippine nationals studying in the VET sector for the 11 months to end May 2025. Was the massive clampdown partly a response to the surge in asylum applications from Philippine nationals? Only DHA would know.

The third nationality with a very large surge in asylum applications in 2023-24 was Colombia. The only explanation for this that I can find is an extraordinary surge in Colombian nationals securing offshore student visa grants for the ELICOS sector. Once international borders re-opened, primary offshore visa grants for Colombian students in the ELICOS sector increased rapidly from 8,352 in 2021-22 and 19,816 in 2022-23.

DHA clamped down on ELICOS visas for Colombian nationals, reducing these to 9,990 primary visa grants in 2023-24 and 1,551 in the 11 months to May 2025.

Given the short nature of ELICOS courses, for those Colombian students who did not make much progress with their English, an asylum application would be about the only means of extending stay. With this experience, it would be surprising that the Government would entertain again opening up the ELICOS sector, particularly to Colombian students. This is despite intense pressure from the ELICOS sector.

Two other nationalities that either experienced a surge in asylum applications in 2023-24 or a surprisingly high level of asylum applications given the negligible approval rate were Vanuatu (increased from 354 in 2022-23 to 977 in 2023-24) and Tonga (795 in 2022-23 and 884 in 2023-24).

The explanation for this is very clearly the expansion of the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (P.A.L.M.) Scheme. A surge in asylum applications associated with this Scheme was inevitable, partly due to the very poor design of the visa on which P.A.L.M. workers enter Australia.

That the Government has not sought to address the poor visa design is surprising.

To its credit, the Government has invested in faster processing of onshore asylum applications at both the primary stage and at review, which appears to have stabilised growth in the asylum backlog. But, this is not nearly enough, as it does not deal with the situation of those who have been refused asylum but have not departed.

If Australia is to avoid the problems this is causing in North America and Europe (and in particular the hysteria around this issue under the Trump Administration), the Government is going to have to do much more to get on top of the problem.

Delaying the release of relevant reports to the public is not a solution.

Dr Abul Rizvi is an Independent Australia columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.