Australian judge backs Canberra's hard line on immigration

[Infantry]

Australian judge backs Canberra's hard line on immigration

Court rules baby born to asylum seekers in Australia is unlawful arrival and denies visa

PUBLISHED : Thursday, 16 October, 2014, 4:54am
UPDATED : Thursday, 16 October, 2014, 4:54am

Agence France-Presse in Sydney

A baby born in Australia to asylum seekers is not entitled to refugee status. Photo: AFP

A baby born in Australia to asylum seekers is not entitled to refugee status, a judge has ruled, in a case which advocates said will affect scores more children.

Baby boy Ferouz was born in Brisbane's Mater Hospital last year after his mother, from Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya minority, was transferred to Australia from the Pacific state of Nauru due to concerns about her pregnancy.

Since July 2013 Australia has denied asylum seekers arriving by boat resettlement in the country, sending them instead to camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

The government considers Ferouz an unlawful maritime arrival like his parents, and has already denied him a protection visa.

Federal Court Judge Michael Jarrett agreed, ruling that despite the circumstances of his birth, Ferouz was legally an "unauthorised maritime arrival".

"On the applicant's birth he entered Australia and became an 'unlawful non-citizen', given that neither of his parents held a valid visa," he said in his judgment.

"The applicant is therefore, in my view, an 'unauthorised maritime arrival' ... and his application for a protection visa was invalid."

Canberra's immigration policy is designed to stop asylum seekers from using people smugglers to bring them to Australia by boat, a practice which has resulted in the drowning of hundreds of people over the years.

Jarrett said if the government's decision was reversed, "there may be more incentive for pregnant women to engage people smugglers".

Prior to the ruling, lawyers had said the fate of about 100 babies born on Australian soil to asylum seekers who arrived via boat rested on the decision.

Meanwhile on Tuesday the High Court in Canberra began hearing a case on the validity of a law used to detain 157 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers for weeks on the high seas in June, after they sailed from India.

Lawyers for the Tamils, who are now held in a detention camp on Nauru, claim their clients were falsely imprisoned on the ship.