Background Briefing

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Katrina Bolton: Forget images of boats, headscarves and beards. Most 'illegals' living in Australia didn't sail across the seas. They came in through the airport, and stayed long after their visas expired. There are more than 60,000 of them, and they're living amongst us. They're our friends, neighbours, colleagues, lovers, or just those faces we pass on the street.

This is Background Briefing on Radio National; I'm Katrina Bolton.

The largest group among these 'illegals', more than 10,000 in all, came from the United Kingdom. And that's where Raymond is from. He headed to Australia for a holiday and stayed for 14 years before the Immigration Department came knocking. He was in Villawood detention centre when he spoke with Background Briefing by phone.

Raymond: Well I was only initially staying for a couple of months, and that. And I just stayed. I don't know why, I just stayed, maybe enjoying myself.

Katrina Bolton: What sort of life did you build?

Raymond: A good life, just a nice life, yes, nice money and all, I've never ever wanted for anything, yes, quite a nice life, yes. Nice friends and that, yes.

Katrina Bolton: Did it ever occur to you that you maybe should go home, back to England?

Raymond: Yes, one day I was always intending to go home, yes, it's where my home is, isn't it? That's where I live. I was just staying for a bit of a holiday, weren't I, just carrying on didn't I?.

Katrina Bolton: Raymond had worked for some of the 14 years he was living in Australia, painting houses and doing other odd jobs. He'd paid taxes and over the years gathered friends, a car, furniture, and even a long-term girlfriend. He says no one will tell him exactly how he got caught, but someone must have dobbed him in. Raymond is furious at being locked up.

"Even the guards and people say, even the people in here, 'what are you doing in here? You're English, you shouldn't be locked up."

Raymond: Even the guards and people say, even the people in here, 'what are you doing in here? You're English, you shouldn't be locked up.' And that's why, it's right though, isn't it. Civil country in England, they don't lock you up. But here they just treat you like an animal; I'm nothing aren't I? It's embarrassing like to be English and be a white person, when you see the people in here and what they're going through.

Katrina Bolton: Raymond is a statistical anomaly. Very few British people end up in detention. Each year the Immigration Department catches around 14,000 overstayers of all nationalities. Around 5,000 of them volunteer themselves on their way out of the country. The remainder are often caught working, at restaurants, farms, building sites and brothels.

It's thought 15,000 of the overstayers have been living here undetected for 10 years or more. But it's a constantly shifting population. Many thousands stay just for a few years.

Some of them are backpackers like Marty, who we spoke with at a little pub in Sydney's King's Cross. He says it's not hard to find work even if you don't have the right visa. It's all about networking, and even things like beer coasters come in handy.

Marty: Usually we always just hit the pub and yeah everybody helps each other pretty good because everybody's been in the same boat. And we just come home with just stacks of what do you call them? Just the beer things, just numbers on the back, yeah, it's excellent, it's great. Just networking is the biggest thing, pubs and hostels. You're staying in a hostel, everybody spreads the work pretty good.

Katrina Bolton: He says you have to be careful who you talk to because there are consistent rumours of spies in the ranks, backpackers hired by the Immigration Department to spill the beans on would-be illegal workers. But he says once you have a phone number of an employer looking for workers, it's all easy.

Marty: Yep da, da, da, you just make up a bit of bullshit. But they're usually asking if you have your work visa.

Katrina Bolton: But do you then just have to say, 'Yes'?

Marty: Yes, and just hope that they don't want a photocopy and stuff, which rarely, rarely they do. Then if they do you go, 'Oh, I just forgot my passport' or whatever and the end up forgetting about it. But they do need a tax file number. They do need one. It doesn't come back for six to eight weeks anyway. But it's tough too, because they want bank details, so if you're using someone else's work visa, right, or tax file number instead of making one up, which is, you know, it's better to use a legit tax file number. But then they want your bank details for direct deposit a lot of times, which can screw you up, because you're not that person, you know what I mean.

Katrina Bolton: Marty says there are several ways to get around things like having to provide a tax file number. For starters, if you're not planning to stay a long time, you can just make one up. It takes six to eight weeks for the number to bounce, and by then the work is done and you've moved on.

For politicians, the overstayer issue is a bit of a canker. It's unsightly and uncomfortable, but it just won't go away. And every now and again, someone gives it a bit of a prod, just like Greens Senator Bob Brown did on SBS television, right before last year's Federal election.

Bob Brown: Look there, what Phillip's not saying is that there are 60,000 illegal immigrants in Australia who came by plane. But they happen to be from New Zealand and the United States and Canada and Britain, and Europe. And they're not being hunted down and put into mandatory detention centres, the same as those people who come on the boats are. Now that's discriminatory. There are another 17,000 who came in the last three years, queue jumpers legally, because they had either business connections, they've been in charge of companies with more than 50 people, or they've got $250,000 in their back pocket and they can get here at the front of the queue. But if you're poor and you don't come from an English-speaking background or a European background, you have much more difficulty getting to the country.

Katrina Bolton: Later in the interview, Federal Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock replied, saying New Zealanders were not among the overstayers. But he says he's heard the whole issue raised before.

Philip Ruddock: I heard this furphy that Bob raised about people from the United Kingdom being significant proportions of the overstay numbers. Look I think it's about 6,000 at any one time, a much smaller number during the course of the year. Brits do get detained if they behave in a way which demonstrates an unwillingness to comply with our requirement that they go home. And if you're dealing with some groups of people who are compliant and are willing to go home, then detention is less likely. But the fact is that if they break our laws, they will be detained in the same way as everyone else.

The Insight debate

Philip Ruddock: No but it's 6,000 Brits and look you also said, Bob -

Bob Brown: 60,000 illegal immigrants in the country who came by plane at the moment.

Jenny Brockie: We're going to have to move on -

Katrina Bolton: That was the Insight program on SBS.

What didn't come up in that discussion is that when the Immigration Department does catch overstayers, it's not usually British or American ones they find, but Indonesians.

Background Briefing asked Federal Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock why Indonesians get caught the most often.

Philip Ruddock: The figures have varied from year on year. I know that last year they were high in terms of those located. I was a bit surprised about that because for most of the time Brits have been the largest number of people located.

Katrina Bolton: How can it be that the top three that are caught came up as Indonesia, China and the Philippines when the majority -

Philip Ruddock: Well China, Indonesia and the Philippines are also large contributors through overstay numbers.

Katrina Bolton: But they're not proportional. What we're talking about here is a gap of people who are missing from Britain and the UK.

Philip Ruddock: Well that's the whole point I'm making. It's not entirely proportional, and there are variations from time to time, and I simply make the point that in my previous takeout of the figures for locations, the UK was the top of the list. This year it wasn't. I think that's just aberrant.

Katrina Bolton: It's not an aberration. A breakdown of the Immigration Department's yearly figures shows that every year since 1997, Indonesians have topped the list of those who get caught.

Car driving sounds

Katrina Bolton (in car): Some of the people who get caught end up where we're heading now, Villawood detention centre, about an hour west of Sydney. It's a mix of brick buildings and plastic-looking demountables, surrounded by cyclone fences and rolls of razor wire.

The car that patrols the fence line here has a bit rental sticker on the side and the whole place looks like it could be dismantled overnight.

Around 350 people are held here at any one time and you can visit a detainee if you know their name. Inside the visiting area you can move around quite freely.

Today it looks like we're not going to be allowed in, the visiting area is closed.

On my previous visits here I've found people are happy to talk with me, but they're apprehensive about being formally interviewed. Often they don't have very good English.

There are no easy answers here, especially when the people have been in Australia for a long time. Their stories are complex. One Korean man wants to stay in Australia so he can be near his daughter. But he says he can't go through the proper channels because his ex-wife wouldn't support the application. He got caught after his ex-wife came round and punched his new wife and he called the police.

Another overstayer, a young man from Fiji, just wants to have a chance at a better life than he'd have at home. He's 22 and he's already been in Villawood for two years, and he's involved in a class action. He says it will probably be at least two more years before he gets out, one way or the other.

There are a few Europeans; they generally get processed quite quickly because they don't tend to apply for asylum and they've usually got at least valid passports.

Recording equipment isn't allowed inside Villawood, which is why the interviews you'll hear from people here are recorded over the phone.

OK, we might as well go.

Car departing

Katrina Bolton: Can I speak to Trevor Tschudin from South Africa please?

Villawood detainee: South Africa, right.

Katrina Bolton: Thank you.

Villawood detainee: South Africa!

Katrina Bolton: Trevor Tschudin is a white South African who came to Australia nearly six years ago. He was given a visa to stay because he was in a de facto relationship with an Australian citizen. But the relationship went sour, and his partner pulled the plug, just five weeks before Trevor would have been able to stay in Australia in his own right.

Trevor spoke to Background Briefing from Villawood detention centre.

Trevor Tschudin: My partner said to me that might cancel my visa, might inform the Immigration Department, and I said, 'Please, don't do this, you know what my situation is, that I don't have family or anything like this back home in South Africa, as I grew up in an orphanage.' So if I had to return to South Africa it could cause a lot of problems for me because of the situation over there.

Katrina Bolton: Trevor's partner ended the relationship and Trevor moved house. Two years went by before he found out his visa had been cancelled.

"I was actually frightened. I thought 'Oh my God, you know I have actually been in this country 5-1/2 years now and all of a sudden I have no visa, where do I go to, what do I do?"

Trevor Tschudin: When I found that out I was actually frightened. I thought 'Oh my God, you know I have actually been in this country 5-1/2 years now and all of a sudden I have no visa, where do I go to, what do I do?' I wasn't in the position financially, you know because lawyers in this country cost a fortune. But I thought to myself, well I'd better start getting things together and start saving money, because that was my intention, to regularise my status. But before I could even do that I got dobbed in by my partner.

Katrina Bolton: Trevor was at Villawood while applications went through to get him a valid passport or travel document. He's since applied for refugee status. He says he's afraid of returning to South Africa and wants more than anything to be able to stay in Australia.

Trevor Tschudin: If this was like a vote and I had to put my case and everybody knew my circumstances, I'm very, very positive that 90% of Australia would say Yes, you know I should be able to stay in this country because, you know, I'm not a person of bad character of anything like that. I'm really just a plain, normal, hardworking, man on the street, and honest at that too. And I'm so confused and so distraught.

Katrina Bolton: Overstayers are the lepers of the migrant community. There are no community or lobby groups to speak for them, and they're blamed for a variety of problems. It's said they take Australian jobs, drain the welfare system, take medical supplies that would otherwise go to Australian citizens and pose security and disease risks as well. But it's almost impossible to see how much substance is behind these claims.

One study did match up the Department of Immigration's overstayer list with records from the then Department of Social Security, and out of almost 60,000 overstayers, only four were prosecuted for welfare fraud.

Mark Wooden is a professorial research fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic Research. He says determining the economic impact of overstayers is like clutching at shadows.

Mark Wooden: It is a fairly large unknown, and yes, they're in Australia, many of them have jobs and they're contributing economically. They generally aren't a drain on the welfare system but we don't know who they are, that's the whole point, we can't find them.

Katrina Bolton: He says it is possible to make an educated guess about what the economic impact would be.

Mark Wooden: Well generally they are consumers, they're spending money. They're certainly not drawing on the welfare system in any way, unless it's completely fraudulent, that's possible in a few cases, but by and large that's not the case. Many are continuing to have jobs but often they're the sorts of jobs that are itinerant, they don't last very long, and they move from job to job. And so it may be in industries where it's not that easy finding a supply of readily-available workers from the resident population. So in that sense they're probably filling quite a job economic niche.

Katrina Bolton: Dr Bob Birrell is more concerned about the social impact overstayers might have. He's an influential figure in the world of immigration policy, and he says overstayers threaten Australian values. On the phone, Dr Bob Birrell.

"We do not want to enlarge the existing size of the ethnic underclass in Australia."

Bob Birrell: We have a long record unfortunately, of people who have come here without the skills to compete in the mainstream economy who do face serious problems of unemployment, of low income, difficulties in settlement. We do not want to enlarge the existing size of the ethnic underclass in Australia, it's already a serious matter, as you should know. In Sydney, there are a whole wedge of south-western suburbs in Sydney, where you've got concentrations now of relatively poor non-English speaking background migrants, a large proportion of whom come from a part of recent streams from Asia. We've already got a major problem there where people struggle to achieve their ambitions. We don't want to be adding to it through people coming through the back door who are not a value-add in terms of the skills needed in the Australian context. Because if we don't control that flow, well we're just going to expand that underclass and create a divided society which is just totally alien to our traditions.

Katrina Bolton: Both Dr Birrell and Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock point out that Australia's overstayer population is small in relative terms. But they warn the numbers could multiply if there's perceived to be a weak spot in the immigration system. Birrell points to the rush of asylum applications from Chinese students in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre as an example of such a weak spot being exploited. He says such actions could destroy the integrity of Australia's migration program.

Bob Birrell: The acceptability of the overall immigration program in Australia depends on the government being able to establish that it is a system of integrity, that you can't sustain a major immigration program such as we have if it leaks at the edges. And that's why the government is so concerned to ensure that it controls who comes here and it minimises the fringe migration or illegal migration.

Katrina Bolton: Bob Birrell, Director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at Monash University.

It's the way authorities deal with overstayers once they're identified that has got them into hot water over the past 18 months. One incident threatened to send Maribyrnong detention centre into chaos.

Reporter: Community observers say tension between inmates and authorities at the Maribyrnong detention centre has been at flashpoint for several weeks, ever since the death of Viliami Tanginoa just before Christmas. Some detainees say the Tongan man, due to be deported, was being chased by guards when he climbed up a basketball ring then fell to his death. It's now up to the Coroner -

Katrina Bolton: The man who died was a 52-year-old overstayer from Tonga. He'd lived in Australia for at least 14 years, and allegedly killed himself rather than be forced to leave. There are major differences in accounts of how he died.

Initial reports said a statement from the centre guards said he'd fallen while climbing a basketball pole in an attempt to avoid them. But other reports quote detainee witnesses saying the man had been on top of the pole for more than eight hours when he threw himself head first onto the concrete. A police investigation into the death is due to go to the Coroner within the next two weeks.

Another case has gone right to the United Nations. It revolves around a young boy, born in Australia to parents who had overstayed their visas. The family's lawyer, Anne O'Donoghue, agreed to talk with Background Briefing from her office amid the jumbled rooms of Sydney's old Trades Hall building. She asked the family's privacy be protected.

Anne O'Donoghue: Both the mother and father came to Australia on separate visas, overstayed their visas, for a period of at least around about ten years, had a child in Australia, and then that child was eligible to apply as an Australian citizen. The child's application was approved and at the same time another application had to be lodged for the parents. A protection visa application was lodged for the parents and that was eventually determined and knocked back by the Minister. The case then went to the UN, invoking the provisions of certain articles of the protocol.

Katrina Bolton: And what do those provisions look at?

"By forcing the child to go back to another country, those rights would be interfered with. The child is now 13 years of age, has not known any other country, is educated here, is at school here, has developed all the social and moral links with Australia."

Anne O'Donoghue: Well they really look at the rights of the child, whether those rights were violated. The fact that the child's rights can't be interfered with, and by forcing the child to go back to another country, those rights would be interfered with. The child is now 13 years of age, has not known any other country, is educated here, is at school here, has developed all the social and moral links with Australia.

Katrina Bolton: What was the basic difference between what you argued to the UN and what the government argued to the UN?

Anne O'Donoghue: Well in a nutshell, the government did not feel that the child's rights were being interfered with. The government felt that the child was an Australian citizen, he could stay here, but it would be the parents' decision if he went back to the parents' home country. Well in one way it's an argument that really doesn't, in a practical sense, hold any water because you know, if a child is 13 years of age, how could the child remain here without very, you know, expensive boarding school fees, a protector or guardian put here, whilst the parents await the processing of their visa offshore. I mean from a practical point of view it would be extremely difficult to organise and the UN recognised that.

Katrina Bolton: Anne O'Donoghue says it's only the third time she's seen the UN rule against the Federal government. She's seen the case as a wake-up call that a tough immigration system needs to be balanced with the rights of Australian citizens, such as the child in this case.

The Federal government is still to decide which way it will move on the case, but Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock maintains it's cultural chauvinism to think the child would be best off in Australia.

"It's a cultural assumption that it's better that the child be here because ultimately it's got a better education, it will be educated in English, you know, I can hear all the arguments, but it's a chauvinist argument."

Philip Ruddock: Australian citizens go overseas all the time. And live overseas all the time. Many thousands of them, every year. I mean is it safe to assume I mean he or she, I'm not sure what it is in this case, can come and go, as an Australian citizen, and if it's in the child's best interests to be with its non-citizen parents in another country, why is it necessarily in its best interest that the parents be here in Australia with child, why can't the child be with the parents in another country? I mean it's a cultural assumption that it's better that the child be here because ultimately it's got a better education, it will be educated in English, you know, I can hear all the arguments, but it's a chauvinist argument.

Katrina Bolton: Every foreigner who comes to Australia has to apply for a visa. Visas can be expensive, slow to get, and there's an official list of people who would find it hard to get one at all. It's called the Risk Factor List, and Radio National's Background Briefing has been able to obtain a copy. Here's a taste:

Afghanistan, female, 60 years or older. Albania, female, 20 years and older. Albania, male, 20 years and older. Armenia, female, 60 years or older. Bangladesh, female, 20 years or older. Bangladesh, male, 20 to 39 years inclusive. Bangladesh, male, 60 years or older. Bosnia-Herzegovina, female, 30 to 39 years inclusive...

Katrina Bolton: The list was set up by the previous Labor government. It looks at the rate by which people from each nationality overstay their visas, or make changes to their visa once they're here.

Immigration lawyer Francesco Motta explains how the list works.

Francesco Motta: It basically means it's harder for you to obtain temporary visas to come to Australia. For example the general criteria for a visitor visa is that a person is wanting to come to Australia for the purposes of visiting or tourism. Now when you apply for such a visa, you have to provide information to the Department of Immigration that that's what your intentions are. Now if you fall into one of the risk factor categories, what the government says is that ah! - this person may well want to come for a holiday, but they're going to want to stay here once they arrive. So we want to see information that basically says that this person will want to return home after their temporary visit has finished. And that information can include things like whether they have permanent employment, whether they own their own property, what members of the family they have in their own country, whether they're married or not, whether they have children, that sort of thing.

Katrina Bolton: Effectively, the bar is set higher for people featuring on the list.

... Egypt, male, 20 to 49 years inclusive. Egypt, male, 60 years or older. Ethiopia, female, 60 years or older. Fiji, female, 20 years or older ...

Katrina Bolton: So who are we trying to keep out?

Francesco Motta: Well again the risk factors always tend to operate almost in a discriminatory manner against people who are non-European, non-Anglo Saxon, you know, people from poorer countries for example, which is you know, a majority of the countries in the world. They tend to fall into risk factor groups, depending on their age group and their gender, and it's quite bizarre because in the general community here in Australia we like to think that you don't judge a person according to their racial or ethnic background and say 'Oh you're going to be like this, because you happen to be Italian or Greek.' You know, it's not accepted here that you can do that sort of thing. Yet for the purposes of migration we quite freely say to people, 'I'm sorry you come from this nationality, you're this age group, you're going to overstay your visa', without actually judging the facts of the individual case, which should take primacy in a non-discriminatory migration system.

... Macedonia, female, 20 years or older. Macedonia, male, 20 years or older...

Katrina Bolton: None of the countries on the Risk Factor List are northern European or American. And any way you look at it, the Risk Factor List means the chances of getting a visa to visit Australia has a great deal to do with race and ethnic background.

The list also has a flow-on effect, because it makes it hard, if not impossible, for some Australian citizens to have friends and families visit them in Australia.

" It can be particularly difficult, almost humiliating, for Australian citizens who wish to bring members of their family here, say, to visit family, in that they are really made to feel that their relative is trying to come to Australia for a dishonest purpose"

Francesco Motta: The other side of it is that it can be particularly difficult, almost humiliating, for Australian citizens who wish to bring members of their family here for special events, say to visit family, or to celebrate special events within the family, or even just to travel or to be tourists, in that they are really made to feel that their relative is trying to come to Australia for a dishonest purpose, that they're not in fact trying to come here for a valid holiday or for the purposes of tourism, but in fact with the intention of staying and taking jobs and doing everything else that the government says these people are trying to do.

... Uruguay, male, 20 to 49 years inclusive. Uruguay, male, 60 years or older. Vietnam, female, 20 years or older. Vietnam, male, 20 years or older. Yugoslavia, female, 30 years or older. Yugoslavia, male, 20 years or older.

Katrina Bolton: Ruby Madan is one Australian citizen who's hit trouble with the Risk Factor List. She's been an Australian citizen for 23 years. She is a flight attendant with Qantas and has made her home in an elegant apartment complex a short drive from Sydney's CBD. Last year, she wanted her cousin, a businessman from Delhi, to come to Australia for Christmas and New Year. His application for a visitor's visa was refused twice.

Ruby Madan: I asked this senior visa officer, and she said to me that basically he had given them no reason to believe that he would wish to return to India. And of course that's completely untrue. And in this instance I was told that his salary was insubstantial, which again is subject to questioning. Substantial for whom? And 175,000 rupees in India translates to roughly $40,000 to $50,000 except it has a great deal more buying power. He also showed assets and proof of his ownership of assets, property, factory and family commitments. The Senior Visa Officer, although she might be working according to her work profile, the interpretation of it really to me means that we're going by a very primitive surveillance technique where we're relying on stereotypes and the assumption that people all just want to come and live in Australia is actually quite ridiculous.

Katrina Bolton: Ruby Madan says it was especially frustrating, because another of her friends was having no problems.

Ruby Madan: Well I have a very good example of a friend of mine, Arild from Norway, who's a journalist, and decided very spontaneously without any plans having been made prior that he would like to spend also the holiday season in Australia. And all he did was access it through the Internet. He actually had no physical contact, whereas in my cousin's instance we're talking about going to the office twice, queuing for two hours each time and paying 1,600 on each occasion which is non-refundable. So it's quite an extreme in terms of how we are processing visas.

Katrina Bolton: In the end, Ruby Madan pulled strings, and with the help of a diplomat friend of the family, succeeded in getting a visa for her cousin. He returned home without incident, and so stayed off the records of overstayers.

The figure of 60,000 overstayers is easily worked out. The Department of Immigration has a list of everyone who enters the country on a visa, and a list of everyone who leaves. Those who haven't left are recorded as overstayers. The Department knows their names, ages and other important details.

But Background Briefing has learnt there is a special market for people who want to get into Australia without having their names on any official list. It's people smuggling of the highest order, and it's expensive.

It runs roughly like this: a person pays this particular syndicate around $100,000. The syndicate works for months or even years setting up a false identity for the person in Australia. The person flies into Australia using either false documents or documents belonging to someone else, and assumes their new life.

A different person leaves the country on the same documents, so there's no record showing the person who came into Australia is still here. But this of course is something available to a very few, very wealthy people.

Immigration Officer at airport: Your passport please. Thank you. Incoming passenger card, thanks. Thank you.

Katrina Bolton: There's a strange figure tucked away in DIMA's statistics which says that in 1998, 80 people who were caught were found to have had no visa. It suggests people are finding ways to get into Australia without there being a record of their arrival.

Andreas Schloenhardt is doing a PhD on people trafficking in the Asia-Pacific. He's been studying the slightly less elaborate says people traffickers help their clients avoid or manipulate legal immigration systems. He says criminal organisations are definitely keeping pace with technological changes which are supposed to be making crucial documents such as passports and visas tamper-proof.

"It is very easy to my knowledge, to obtain a false Australian passport or a false visa in places like Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok, and they are easily available. They sell for approximately $5,000 US."

Andreas Schloenhardt: It is very easy to my knowledge, to obtain a false Australian passport or a false visa in places like Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok, and they are easily available. They sell for approximately $5,000 US.

Katrina Bolton: He says the role of government is complicated, especially as people trafficking networks redirect their efforts in getting people through airports rather than simply over land borders.

Andreas Schloenhardt: Migration, be it legally or illegally, depends on the possession of the right document. And governments have made it more difficult to obtain these documents, documents have become more sophisticated, and also it has become a lot more difficult for people to apply for visas and for access to these nations. So that is one role of the government. And then of course, you have the phenomenon where government officials become involved in the criminal activities, where they are corrupted, where they sell passports, where they issue and forge visas, or whether simply ignore people passing through airports or throughout a point of immigration.

Katrina Bolton: Trafficking in people is becoming increasingly attractive. For starters, there are ever more people wanting to move.

Andreas Schloenhardt: The media has played its role by just communicating the wealth and luxury and safety of the Western world to countries which are economically poorer and which are politically more unstable, and people are simply more aware of the discrepancy, economically and politically, between nations. Increased travel, easier air travel and open borders in many ways for goods and services has also increased this transparency and made people understand of opportunities abroad and made it a lot more easier to go from A to B.

Katrina Bolton: But he says it's also a case of risks weighing up well with benefits. Penalties for people trafficking are in most countries much lower than penalties for other big league crimes such as drug trafficking. And he says the increasing focus on using fake documents is only making people trafficking more lucrative.

Andreas Schloenhardt: The more sophisticated ways of trafficking, particularly trafficking by air, are exceptionally expensive because they involve usually the use of very sophisticated documents. We're looking roughly at about $30,000 US for someone to travel from the sending country on the basis of forged documents, through a number of transit countries, to places like Australia or the United States. If the way of trafficking is less sophisticated, if people are simply put on a boat or on the back of a truck, as in many cases round Asia, or Europe, that is a lot cheaper of course,

Katrina Bolton: Andreas Schloenhardt, from Adelaide University.

Newsreader: The Immigration Department is confirming that it's arrested nine people in an overnight raid at Gatton in south-east Queensland. Six of the nine have allegedly overstayed their visas, while the three others are thought have been working illegally. The raid follows a similar operation in the area on May 17th which saw the arrest of 24 people.

Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock -

Katrina Bolton: Raids like this are carried out quite regularly on building sites, factories and restaurants around Australia. Last year, raids and such 'compliance activities' netted thousands of people working illegally.

Some unions, including the CFMEU, work with the government to try and identify sites to be raided. John Sutton is the National Secretary of the CFMEU's Construction Division, and Background Briefing went to speak with him at his office.

John Sutton: Normally the conditions are quite retrograde. They're much worse than Aussie workers are used to working in. A lot of these exploited migrant workers will work very long hours, not have safety boots, not have helmets, not have the kind of equipment that Aussie workers would, Australian workers would normally have. Often those workers of course don't have crib rooms supplied, they don't have all the amenities that a bona fide employer should supply to his workforce.

Katrina Bolton: He says it all comes down to the allure of the dollar, and now much more money businesses can make if they secure themselves a cheap and uncomplaining workforce.

John Sutton: Essentially it's a question of cheap labour for employers. The building industry's a very competitive marketplace. It's a marketplace that consists of a multitude of sub-contractors who are all competing for work, and they compete primarily on price, and if they can go in on a lower tender, then more often than not they get the work. And of course if your workforce is such that you can pay it 20, 30, 40, 50 per cent lower than another employer has to pay his workers, then you can see how you're going to be much more cost effective.

Katrina Bolton: Do you think people would be surprised to find out what sort of companies and the profile of companies who do actually employ illegal workers?

"If people were able to go to the top of the tree and find some of the most respectable companies in the country are actually at the top of the pyramid as it were, then I think they would be shocked."

John Sutton: Well they would actually. If people were able to go to the top of the tree and find some of the most respectable companies in the country are actually at the top of the pyramid as it were, then I think they would be shocked.

Katrina Bolton: Are there big name companies involved?

John Sutton: Oh absolutely, yes.

Katrina Bolton: But he says industry is very good at finding ways of shifting responsibility elsewhere.

John Sutton: In an industry like ours, you can have four and five layers of contracting, where some household name construction or development company may sub-let to another company and they'll sublet and sublet, and eventually five layers down, you find the workers actually doing the work. Often we find the workers doing the work don't even know who it is they're working for. They don't know who their actual employer is because often they're under all kinds of rackets. And all they know is a certain bloke turns up on a certain day and pays them an amount of cash, and that's all they really know.

Katrina Bolton: Another method is to link up with a dodgy labour hire company.

John Sutton: We also find a lot of illegality in the labour hire segment of the industry. Labour hire companies that supply workers on an hourly or daily basis like a meat market. They have proliferated in our industry over the last 10 years and some of those labour hire companies do specialise in using migrant labour. Now there is a provision called Working Holiday Maker visas, and you'll find a lot of these so-called backpackers who are in the country, working for these labour hire agencies. There's actually been quite an explosion of it. But some of these labour hire companies who utilise the working holiday maker people are using illegal workers because the provisions around the working holiday maker visas are really quite specific and restrictive.

Katrina Bolton: National Secretary of the CFMEU's Construction Division, John Sutton.

There are currently no penalties for employers caught hiring illegal workers. It's something Federal Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock agrees needs to change.

Philip Ruddock: I want to see them able to be prosecuted. And at the moment, the law, unless we've got evidence that they do so not just knowingly, but that they were harbouring unlawfuls, we can't convict them of an offence. We have been able to get some convictions but generally speaking the harbouring provision is a very hard one.

Katrina Bolton: How many convictions have you had?

Philip Ruddock: Oh we've had several.

Katrina Bolton: When asked in Parliament how many employers had been prosecuted after hiring illegal workers, Mr Ruddock said that between 1996 and 2000, there hadn't been any prosecutions. The only example given of an employer being prosecuted was a man who was eventually put on a $1000 two-year good behaviour bond.

About 14 months ago, the Immigration Minister, Phillip Ruddock announced he would soon be introducing new legislation to provide tough penalties for employers who were caught hiring illegal workers.

More than a year on, the legisation's yet to be introduced.

Union man John Sutton says the Minister gave in to employer pressure.

John Sutton: I think Ruddock got nervous in an election year. He came under a lot of employer pressure, he came under pressure from the farmers' lobby, who of course like to see fruit picking done by cheap migrant labour, so under a mountain of pressure in an election year, the legislation got shelved.

Katrina Bolton: Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock says that's not the case.

Philip Ruddock: Well the legislation was postponed, and I announced that it was being postponed. It was at the time, we planned its introduction initially at the time when we were introducing changes of a very substantial character in the form of the new tax system, and the time when firms were having to get business numbers and we were requiring particularly small businesses to do a lot more paperwork and it was the subject of a good deal of adverse criticism, as you might well recall.

Katrina Bolton: A program to increase employer awareness of illegal workers has been running for nearly 10 years. As of recently, it includes a free fax-back service and a free hotline employers can call if they want to find out if a worker is legal.

Phone rings

Answering machine: Welcome to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs' Work Rights Information Line. Normal business hours are …

Katrina Bolton: Thousands of pamphlets on the issue have been sent out to businesses, and it's even possible for an employer to arrange a special awareness information session to be delivered at their workplace.

But the Minister says it's still too difficult for an employer to know whether a worker is legal, partly because visas are hard to read.

"I can't look at you and say, 'I think you sound like an Australian. I think you look like an Australian. I mean what does an Australian look like? What does an Australian sound like?"

Philip Ruddock: First of all you've got to work out what sort of visa people have, then whether or not it gives them permission to work. It means you've got to require everybody who presents to get work to have a document that identifies who they are. At the moment, when you want to go and get a job, particularly if you're getting a casual job, picking fruit on a country farm, how do I know that you're entitled to work? I can't look at you and say, 'I think you sound like an Australian. I think you look like an Australian. I mean what does an Australian look like? What does an Australian sound like?

Katrina Bolton: So when can we expect to see this legislation? When is feasible?

Philip Ruddock: Well it's an area in which the ideas that I have been exploring have been with my officials. And we've included draft legislation in the parliamentary program. But it still has numbers of procedures that it has to go through before it will be introduced and enacted.

Katrina Bolton: So coming back to my question, when would it be fair to expect to see penalties for employers who employ illegal workers?

Philip Ruddock: This is the question that you and I talked about before this interview where you're not going to get the answer you want.

Katrina Bolton: Thousands upon thousands of overstayers are living quietly, and hoping they won't be found. For them, media attention is about as desirable as a road accident, or a knock on the door from the Immigration Department.

But British overstayer Raymond, who we heard from at the top of the program, is an exception. He's already been caught. And after 14 years of silence, he's on the phone from Villawood. And he's prepared to give us all a piece of his mind.

"I'm very embarrassed to be an English person here. If Captain Cook had come out here and colonised this and saw how they were treating the people now like today, he'd be very upset wouldn't he? "

Raymond: I'd just like to write down that I'm very embarrassed to be an English person here. If Captain Cook had come out here and colonised this and saw how they were treating the people now like today, they'd be very upset wouldn't it? It seems a bit of a joke, like.

Katrina Bolton: Can you tell me about some of the experiences of the other detainees that you've talked to, people who were caught overstaying their visas?

Raymond: Well there's one man here for five years, he's waiting to get his visa. I don't know what's happening there. I talked to a poor man, he came from Burma, it cost him 2,000 American dollars, he left his family and everything there. He got a forged passport and he came in from England, I think, Belgium, somewhere. He's just been chucked in here, can't speak much English, and just throw you in here. There were Indian people, one father, one Indian boy who got arrested the night we got arrested, an Indian man, he was at the phone, queuing up for two hours in the sun. There's no shade where the sun is, where the phone is. You've got to queue up for hours, there are only two public phones, anyway he phoned up and his father died. He was crying all day, no one seemed to come and bother him, just left him there. Things like that you know. If anything happens any death in the family and that , no one's here to help you or anything, you're just chucked to one corner. And then I saw a Filipino couple the other day, they was working in a Filipino restaurant and all they was doing, they was - don't know what sort of visa they had, they stayed over a year. The reason why, because they've got a daughter in the Philippines and they used to send money over to educate here, that's why they was here, didn't want to be here, but the daughter in the Philippines, had to leave her. Anyway they sent money over and they got arrested and they phoned up the daughter one day and said - she was crying, the girl, she said, 'I'm sorry I've been caught, been caught, I'm in the Immigration Centre, I'm sorry I can't send you to school, I can't get you any Christmas presents', and that poor girl was in here with her husband, she's never been in trouble in her life.

Katrina Bolton: What about out in the community with the overstayers who do live in the community now, is there any sort of common reason as to why they chose to stay in Australia?

Raymond: A lot of people have got no work at home have they and that lot? A lot of people have come here to try and make a better life don't they, try to make some money, don't they? Try to make some money don't they? Generally out there, people are very - what if you're an illegal immigrant you've just got to keep quiet haven't you, just go about your business, it's quite easy, you'll never get caught. It's as simple as that, you'll never get caught unless somebody puts you in. The only reason you ever get caught for.

Katrina Bolton: Background Briefing will, from time to time at this point at the end of the program, drop in something strange and wondrous in the world of satire, a sort of Happy Ending, unrelated to the subject of the program.

Today you'll get a new understanding of the American Bill of Rights, brought to you by Bambi.

Bambi: Do you know your rights? As an American? Hi, my name is Bambi, and I'm going to teach them to you. First, let's start off with the preamble to the United States Constitution. We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America. And now the first ten amendments to the constitution, also known as the Bill of Rights.

These are your basic right as an American citizen as protected by law. The first amendment. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The second amendment. A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

The third amendment. No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war be in a manner to be prescribed by law.

The fourth amendment. The right of the people to be secure in their persons houses papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated... (fades)

Background Briefing theme music

Katrina Bolton: The Bill of Rights enactment, of which we played only a part, was from the crankymediaguy website

http://www.crankymediaguy.com

The full version of the audio piece is at

http://www.crankymediaguy.com/radio/billofrights.ram

Background Briefing's Co-ordinating Producer is Linda McGinness. Technical Operator, Mark Don. Executive Producer, Kirsten Garrett. I'm Katrina Bolton.