The Australian government has agreed to pay the small Pacific island nation of Nauru some $1.6bn over three decades to resettle former detainees who have “no legal right to remain in Australia”, in the latest iteration of Australia’s controversial offshore detention policies.
Both governments signed a secretive deal last week under which Nauru will resettle up to 354 people who have no legal right to stay in Australia in exchange for an initial 408 million Australian dollar payment ($267m) and about 70 million Australian dollars ($46m) each year thereafter.
Independent Senator David Pocock said a “snap Senate hearing” on Wednesday night revealed that the “agreement with Nauru to send asylum seekers there” could cost the Australian government up to 2.5 billion Australian dollars ($1.6bn) over 30 years.
The Senate hearing came after Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced last week that he had signed a memorandum with Nauru’s president “for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received in Nauru”.
“It’s in both nations’ interest to move through this as efficiently as we can,” said Clare Sharp, head of immigration from the Department of Home Affairs.
“It’s in Nauru’s interest, because money doesn’t flow until people arrive,” she said.
With an estimated population of some 12,500 and a mainland measuring just 21 square kilometres (8.1 square miles), Nauru is among the world’s smallest countries.
Nauru’s President David Adeang said in a statement on Sunday that the agreement with Australia will “support Nauru’s long-term economic resilience”.
Jana Favero, deputy CEO of the Melbourne-based Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said the deal with Nauru was “discriminatory, disgraceful and dangerous”.
Favero said the broad wording in the deal could enable many thousands of people to be deported from Australia.
“That’s tens of thousands of lives at risk – not the tiny number the government would have Australians believe,” Favero said in a statement.
Australian immigration officials said there are no guarantees all 354 people – including some convicted of serious crimes – will be deported to Nauru, with the Pacific island making the final decision.
Australia’s government has struggled to find a way to deal with immigrants who have no other country to go to when their visas are cancelled. The country’s High Court ruled in 2023 that indefinite detention was unlawful if deportation was not an option, leading to the release of 220 people.
The number of people in that situation in Australia now numbers 354, government officials said.
In February, Australia paid an undisclosed sum for Nauru to accept three immigrants convicted of violent offences, though legal challenges have reportedly stalled their transfer.
Nauru was one of two countries Australia initially sent asylum seekers to when it first began its controversial offshore detention programme in 2001.
In June 2023, the last refugees remaining on Nauru returned to Australia after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese fulfilled an election promise to end offshore detention.
In January this year, the United Nations Human Rights Committee found Australia’s offshore policy had violated two provisions of the legally-binding 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – one on arbitrary detention and one protecting the right to challenge detention in court.
Nauru has in recent years turned to other migration-related schemes in attempts to revive its economy, which historically has relied on thriving exports of phosphate, a key ingredient used in fertiliser. But those supplies have long dried up, and researchers today estimate 80 percent of Nauru has been rendered uninhabitable by mining.
Last month, Nauru’s government announced it had welcomed its first new citizens under an Economic and Climate Resilience Citizenship Programme, which provides citizenship and a passport for a minimum investment in the country of $105,000.
The government hopes to raise tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue from the programme, which would help the island nation adapt to rising sea levels, as some of its close neighbours, including Tuvalu, face existential threats from rising sea levels.
The post Australia to send hundreds to Nauru in $1.6bn migrant resettlement deal appeared first on Al Jazeera.
