The Australian government's get-tough policy to close the door on asylum seekers is creating instead a rush to reach the country, officials said.
Australian Immigration Minister Chris Evans and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the clampdown on asylum seekers late last week.
There has been "immediate suspension of processing of all visa applications from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan,'' said Evans. But all regular maritime arrivals will continue to be processed at Christmas Island, even though the facilities there are "stretched," he said.
"The government has taken a consistently strong line on people smuggling. These changes send a strong message to people smugglers that they cannot guarantee a visa outcome. We have always had uppermost in our minds the need to ensure that we continue to discharge our obligations and international law."
The government said the policy will stem the flow of people risking their lives in rickety boats, as well as paying often ruthless people smugglers thousands dollars, for passage across the ocean.
But the opposite is happening, a report in the Adelaide newspaper The Advertiser said.
Just after the government's announcement, media reported that the 38th asylum-seeker boat this year arrived in Australian waters and a flotilla of asylum-seeker boats is expected to leave for Australia from the Indonesian archipelago within days.
Authorities have identified at least 15 people-smuggling gangs in Malaysia and Indonesia, who have mobilized hundreds of refugees mostly from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Sri Lanka. They are making their way to boats lying off islands near Sumatra, The Advertiser said.
The newspaper also said that two boats carrying 55 suspected asylum seekers had been intercepted since last week and they were being taken to the Christmas Island detention center.
People smugglers have been going online and telling people that Australian laws are changing and they must make the voyage as soon as possible. A bidding war between people smugglers has seen the price of passage drop by half, to around $4,000 a head.
The Rudd government defended its new policy by claiming that Afghanistan's Hazara population is no longer at risk of persecution. But The Australian newspaper reported Pakistani immigration and human rights officials said Hazaras still face life-threatening persecution on both sides of the border.
A senior official with the human trafficking arm of the Federal Investigation Agency said this week Hazaras were regularly targeted in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, where most of its 500,000 Afghan Hazara refugees were housed.
Suspending visa applications for six months would have little effect on numbers of Hazara asylum-seekers. They typically planned and saved for three or four years before making the lengthy often dangerous sea trip.
"Another six months will make no difference in that cycle," the official is quoted by The Australian.
Australia's official Opposition leader Tony Abbott said the Rudd government's move was an election ploy as voters are likely to go the polls by the end of the year, The Age newspaper said.
Abbott called for the reintroduction temporary protection visas that allow asylum seekers to stay in Australia until conditions improve in their home countries.
The new policy follows a U.N. warning that people smuggling is out of control in Indonesia.
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