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Asylum seekers lack knowledge of visa policies

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-06-15 15:05

SYDNEY -- A Refugee Council of Australia report released on Monday found few asylum seekers knew anything about visa policies in the countries they were fleeing to.

The report on the asylum-seeking process in Asia and the Middle East also revealed that in some countries genuine refugees were still treated as illegal immigrants.

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"The situation for people in their countries of first asylum is really very difficult," Refugee Council of Australia chief executive Paul Power said at a Refugee Week launch in Sydney.

"Most of them, if not all of them, had official registration with the United Nations and yet in a number of the countries where people were seeking refuge they were treated as illegal immigrants.

"They were denied the right to work, denied any opportunity to be able to support themselves and regularly harassed by the authorities," he said.

Council president John Gibson said Australians needed to acknowledge the underlying "push factors" forcing many people to flee their homelands.

The United Nations had recorded a 12 percent global rise in the number of people moving for fear of their lives, Gibson noted.

"We should never lose sight of the plight of individuals," he said.