Overstayer system fair and effective

Letter to the Editor - The Canberra Times
19 July 2004

Dear Sir/Madam

Your comments suggesting that departmental officers would actively demonise any of the people it has dealings with is offensive (Sending them home, 18/07).

Similarly your analogy to concentration camp victims is a gross and insulting distortion of the circumstances in which detainees find themselves. Australian detention centres offer a range of health and psychological services, televisions, videos, DVD machines, Hi-Fi music systems, computer games systems, computers, various board games and musical equipment.

Furthermore your comments concerning the effectiveness of the compliance operations is very wide of the mark.

Australia is probably the only country in the world that has the systems to say with any certainty who was within its borders at any given time and to attempt a calculation of the number of visa overstayers in the first place.

Far from questioning the integrity of the overstayer calculation, the recent Australian National Audit Office report confirmed the statistical validity of the methodology the Department uses.

Our principal intelligence comes from our own records and referrals from the community. These provide highly reliable and specific information about the identity and whereabouts of unlawful non-citizens and illegal workers which the Department vigorously follows-up. This is supported by data-matching and verification across a range of databases to locate people.

This system continues to be highly effective in locating overstayers. In fact in 2002-03, the Department detained some 21,500 overstayers. Preliminary estimates for what has been achieved in 2003-04 indicate that the number will be even higher.

Stewart Foster
Director
Public Affairs
DIMIA