Opening up access to permanent residence for long stay refugees on temporary visas is right and inevitable. The decision will not set off a major new surge of maritime asylum seekers. The Coalition and their supporters have selective memories. Temporary protection visas were never a deterrent anyway.

The government’s decision to allow access to permanent residence to some 19,000 people who arrived by sea in Australia over a decade ago, who have been found to be refugees, and who are locked in a theoretically endless cycle of three or five year temporary visas, is the right thing to do.

This article is reproduced from Pearls and Irritations website. Read the full article here.

Peter Hughes is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development. He had a long career in the Commonwealth Department of Immigration and Citizenship, retiring as Deputy Secretary in 2011. He was awarded the Public Service Medal in 2005 for outstanding public service in the development of policies and programs to increase citizenship, multicultural harmony and the settlement of refugees.