Boat arrivals

The majority of asylum seekers who seek protection in Australia arrive through authorised channels and with valid visas. Some, however, travel through unauthorised channels without travel documents and may enlist a people smuggler to assist their escape.

Asylum seekers are sometimes forced to flee in this way because it is not always safe or practicable for them to obtain travel documents or travel through authorised channels. Refugees are, by definition, persons fleeing persecution and in most cases are being persecuted by their own government. It is often too dangerous for refugees to apply for a passport or exit visa or approach an Australian Embassy for a visa, as such actions could put their lives, and the lives of their families, at risk. Refugees may also be forced to flee with little notice due to rapidly deteriorating situations and do not have time to apply for travel documents or arrange travel through authorised channels.

In the Asia-Pacific region, very few countries are signatories to the Refugee Convention and therefore have no legal obligation to provide protection to refugees. The average standard of protection for refugees and asylum seekers across the region falls well below international benchmarks, with many lacking access to the most basic of human rights – access to an asylum process, official permission to remain in the country, protection from arbitrary detention and refoulement, the right to support themselves, health care and access to basic education for their children. Even among countries which are party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol, the credibility of refugee status determination is frequently questionable, protections against refoulement are insufficient and standards of reception for asylum seekers are often poor. Other states parties lack the financial and institutional capacity to uphold their protection obligations effectively. These conditions frequently drive refugees and asylum seekers to engage in secondary movement in the hope of finding genuine safety and protection.

Fleeing by boat is often very costly, extremely dangerous and renders asylum seekers vulnerable to exploitation by smugglers. It is not a form of escape which would be willingly chosen by asylum seekers if safer options were available.

"Illegal" entrants?

Asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat are not engaging in illegal activity. The UN Refugee Convention (to which Australia is a signatory) recognises that refugees have a lawful right to enter a country for the purposes of seeking asylum, regardless of how they arrive or whether they hold valid travel or identity documents. The Convention stipulates that what would usually be considered as illegal actions (e.g. entering a country without a visa) should not be treated as illegal if a person is seeking asylum. This means that it is incorrect to refer to asylum seekers who arrive without authorisation as “illegal”, as they in fact have a lawful right to enter Australia to seek asylum.

In line with our obligations under the Convention, Australian law also permits unauthorised entry into Australia for the purposes of seeking asylum. Asylum seekers do not break any Australian laws simply by arriving on boats or without authorisation.

Permitting asylum seekers to entry a country without travel documents is similar to allowing ambulance drivers to exceed the speed limit in an emergency – the action would be ordinarily be considered illegal, but the circumstances warrant an exception.

Detention of unauthorised arrivals

Australia's Migration Act 1958 requires all unlawful non-citizens to be detained, regardless of circumstances, until they are granted a visa. As such, an asylum seeker who arrives or is present in Australian territory without a visa must be detained.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship stresses that immigration detention is intended be administrative, not punitive. It is not designed to punish unlawful non-citizens, but to allow their status to be assessed. Regardless of this intention, however, mandatory detention has serious negative impacts on asylum seekers. It violates their human rights and can be extremely detrimental to their health and wellbeing. For further information, see our page on Mandatory Detention.

Offshore processing

Under the Migration Act, a non-citizen who first enters Australia at an excised offshore place (such as Christmas Island) without legal authorisation is unable to submit a valid visa application unless the Minister for Immigration makes a personal intervention into the case. They are also barred from the refugee status determination process that applies on the Australian mainland. For further information, see our page on Excised Offshore Places.

Statistics on irregular maritime arrivals

Most nations do not break down their asylum seeker statistics by mode of arrival (ie. sea, land or air). However, compared to other countries which do keep such statistics, the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat to Australia is very low. Australia is geographically isolated and, being an island, has no land borders with any other country. These factors make Australia one of the most difficult countries in the world for asylum seekers to reach. Australia also has universal visa requirements and carrier sanctions.Because of this, it is highly unlikely that Australia will ever receive the large numbers of onshore asylum applications that other countries experience.

In 2009, Australia received 6,170 onshore asylum applications, just 1.6% of the 377,160 applications received across 44 industrialised nations. Of these applicants, 2,726 arrived by boat – a mere 0.7% of the total number of asylum applications in industrialised nations. In the same year, over 77,000 asylum seekers arrived by boat in Yemen, a developing country with a GDP per capita of just over $US1,000 (compared to Australia’s GDP per capita of over $US45,000); and almost 1,500 asylum seekers arrived by boat in Malta, a country of less than 420,000 people.

No. of irregular arrivals by sea, by country 2006-09

COUNTRY	2006	2007	2008	2009
Australia	60	148	161	2,726
Greece	9,050	19,900	15 300	10,165
Italy	22,000	19,900	36 000	8,700
Malta	1,800	1,800	2 700	1,470
Spain	32,000	18,000	13 400	7,285
Yemen	29,000	29,500	50 000	77,310

Source: United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2010), All in the same boat: The challenges of mixed migration, http://www.unhcr.org/pages/4a1d406060.html; and Phillips, J. & Spinks, H. (2010). “Boat Arrivals in Australia since 1976”. Parliament of Australia, Parliamentary Library. http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/bn/sp/BoatArrivals.htm. 2009 figure for Australia obtained directly from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.  

Refugees ariving by boat form only a small proportion of Australia's overall Refugee and Humanitarian Program. In 2009-10, fewer than one in six of the Refugee and Humanitarian visas determined during the year were granted to boat arrivals. The 2,156 Protection Visas issued to refugees who entered Australia by boat made up just 15.6% of the 13,770 Refugee and Humanitarian visas issued in 2009-10 and just 1.0% of the 208,921 permanent additions to the Australian population by migration.

Asylum seekers arriving by boat, by financial year, 1 July 1989 to 30 June 2010

Year	No. of boats	No. of people		Year	No. of boats	No. of people
1989-90	3	224		2000-01	54	4,137
1990-91	5	158		2001-02	19	3,039
1991-92	3	78		2002-03	0	0
1992-93	4	194		2003-04	3	82
1993-94	6	194		2004-05	0	0
1994-95	21	1,071		2005-06	8	61
1995-96	14	589		2006-07	4	133
1996-97	13	365		2007-08	3	25
1997-98	13	157		2008-09	23	985
1998-99	42	921		2009-10	117	5,315
1999-2000	75	4,175		Total	430	21,903

Asylum seekers arriving by boat, by calendar year, 1 January 1976 to 31 December 2010

Year	No. of boats	No. of people		Year	No. of boats	No. of people
1976		111		1997	11	339
1977		868		1998	17	200
1978		746		1999	86	3721
1979		304		2000	51	2939
1980		0		2001	43	5516
1981		30		2002	1	1
1982-88		0		2003	1	53
1989	1	26		2004	1	15
1990	2	198		2005	4	11
1991	6	214		2006	6	60
1992	6	216		2007	5	148
1993	3	81		2008	7	161
1994	18	953		2009	60	2726
1995	7	237		2010	134	6535
1996	19	660		Total	489	27,069

Source: Department of Immigration and Citizenship. Total number of boats exclude boats prior to 1989, as statistics are not available.