Kangaroos can only hop forward

I've been working at the Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) * for the past six months which really is poetic justice.

My job relates to the reforms the Department is putting into place after some major scandals in 2005. You see, Australia has a mandatory detention policy. That is, if you are a non-citizen in Australia without a valid visa, the Department is legally required to detain you until 1) you get a valid visa 2) they succeed in removing you from the country. Most of the time this detention takes place in a "detention centre" which is like a prison except you're there for no other crime than existing in a place you're not supposed to physically exist, so they have to be slightly nicer to you, and they plant shrubs to try to hide the barbed wire on the fences.

Australia is an island, large in size but small in population, with this population densely concentrated in urban areas, and we are an ocean away from any of our neighbors. So this policy is actually capable of being largely implemented, unlike the U.S., where the fact that over 10 million illegal immigrants are currently living, building community ties, working, and becoming intrinsic to the economy means that most debates over immigration policy take place in a Dada-esque cloud of surrealness. However public debate in Australia over the fate of 80 asylum-seeking boat arrivals seems to rage with the same furor as the debate over the 10+ million illegals in the States, which maybe points to some mysterious law of political equivalency.

Anyway, the scandals. In 2005 it was discovered that the Department had held an Australian resident, Cornelia Rau, in a detention centre for a year. Ms. Rau was mentally ill and on the run from a cult, so she had lied about her identity, claiming to be a German tourist. However, the Department managed to miss the fact that she spoke fluent Australian-accented English and that her German was at a beginner's level. They also missed the missing person notices put out by the Queensland police with her real name and photo. When Ms. Rau's identity was finally discovered by some family friends, the ensuing shit-storm brought some other scandals to light.

For example, there was the case of Vivian Solon, a woman originally from the Phillipines who'd married an Australian citizen, moved here and naturalized, and divorced him four years later, in part because of her mental illness. She reverted to her maiden name, Alvarez, after the divorce. When she was found half-conscious and wounded after a car crash, police suspected she might be an "unlawful non-citizen." No immigration records were found for "Vivian Alvarez" since her citizenship was listed under "Solon," so the Department proceeded to remove her to the Phillipines. They managed to miss the fact that a search on her first name and her birth date would have brought up her records, as well as the missing person notices put out by her ex-husband. What made the scandal even more scandalous was that Ms. Solon was confined to a wheelchair the whole time, a doctor was pressured into signing a dubious release saying she was healthy enough for her flight, and upon arrival at Manila the official accompanying her dumped the wheelchair with some random nuns, who, taken aback, rolled the dazed woman over to the Qantas counter and left her there. Ms. Solon ended up in a hospice for the indigent, where she remained for four years until the Cornelia Rau scandal gave her ex-husband's efforts to query the Department some traction. Then it turned out that a few Departmental officials had discovered the wrongful removal and covered it up.

So yeah, shit storm all round.

Cue audit reports, independent inquiries, media hullabulloo, insincere, legally careful ministerial apologies, high-level brainstorming sessions on Departmental reform, and a $50,000 order of mouse pads emblazoned with the Department's new logo, "People: our business."**

Among the reforms implemented in the post-Cornelia Rau world has been the creation of "Detention Review Managers" in each State who are supposed to review every single new case of detention and make sure that it seems reasonable and that people with identity concerns are being followed up on. I've been helping to design national policies for the role of these Detention Review Managers - what they check up on, things they must consider, how they work with each other and with the National Office.

Another reform has been the requirement of reports to the Ombudsman's Office on every person in detention for more than two years, basically justifying why they are still there. Yes, some people stay in detention for more than two years - seven years has been the record thus far. So I've been writing some of these 2 year reports, which involves investigating the person's history, medical condition, community links, and often their court cases on their claims to refugee status. And I tell ya, soap operas don't seem so unrealistic to me anymore.

It has been an interesting job, but I'm glad that I will soon be gone. The whole Department needs more than a shakeup, it needs deep institutional therapy. In fact the most interesting thing about working here has been seeing the case study of a dysfunctional organization from the inside.

But maybe that's just a natural result of how unnatural the concept of immigration policy is for human beings, anyway. Just think about it - the very concept of a "passport" has only been around for about a hundred years. (I believe high-level British diplomats used to carry something like it, but it wasn't a universal document.) The concept of requiring every visitor to a country to have a visa is even newer.

Part of the psychological distress of people in detention, I believe, springs from this new and rather alienating idea. The earth's the earth, the sky's the sky, and you can't see a border. When you've lived in a place for a while and you have friends there, you start to get attached to it and to feel like you have a right to exist there, independent of any little black markings on a piece of paper that you own. (I know all about that).

This is most evident in cases of foreign citizens who moved to Australia when they were children, but never changed citizenship. If, as adults, they commit crimes that land them in prison for more than 12 months, the Department of Immigration cancels their visas and attempts to send them back to their "home countries" - where they may have no memories or knowledge of the language or culture.

I wonder if the Aboriginal community in Australia has a case for kicking out all the new people as "unlawful non-citizens"? What a shame that they never thought to create a glorious institution like DIAC or they might have a legal case for it. But then, they too were boat arrivals to this island continent, more than 100,000 years ago, and there definitely weren't any visas around back then.



*The Department recently changed its name from Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA). Note inclusion of the word "and" in the new acronym to avoid the spelling "DIC" and the resultant "DIC-head" jokes that are now being cracked anyway.

**Then it turned out that the mice used on the Department's computer systems were designed to work on a bare table, not a mouse pad. So the $50,000 order of mouse pads was thrown away.