{"id":110820,"date":"2025-09-01T13:17:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T13:17:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/110820\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T13:17:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T13:17:12","slug":"australia-will-pay-nauru-to-resettle-foreign-born-criminals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/110820\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia will pay Nauru to resettle foreign-born criminals"},"content":{"rendered":"

MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia will pay the small Pacific island of Nauru to resettle foreign-born criminals who the courts have ruled cannot be imprisoned indefinitely, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese<\/a> said on Monday.<\/p>\n

Nauru has become a political solution for the government after Australia\u2019s High Court ruled in 2023<\/a> that non-citizens with no prospects of being resettled outside Australia could no longer be held indefinitely in immigration detention.<\/p>\n

Albanese did not confirm media reports that Australia would pay the tiny Pacific Island nation, population 13,000, 400 million Australian dollars ($262 million) to establish the deal then AU$70 million ($46 million) annually to maintain it.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who have no right to be here need to be found somewhere to go, if they can\u2019t go home,\u201d Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they can\u2019t be sent back to their country-of-origin because of refoulement provisions and obligations that we have, then we need to find another country for them to go to,\u201d Albanese added.<\/p>\n

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke surprised Australian media on Friday by visiting Nauru, where he signed a memorandum of understanding with Nauruan President David Adeang.<\/p>\n

Adeang said in a statement on Sunday the agreement \u201ccontains undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received by Nauru.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralia will provide funding to underpin this arrangement and support Nauru\u2019s long-term economic resilience,\u201d Adeang said.<\/p>\n

The agreement will be activated when Nauru received the first \u201ctransferees,\u201d who will be given long-term visas, the president said. <\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s Asylum Seeker Resource Center, an advocacy group, reported Nauru planned to issue 280 visas to non-citizens that Australia wanted to deport.<\/p>\n

The center said legislation to be introduced to Australia\u2019s Parliament on Tuesday would strip the right of fairness from deportation decisions under the new Nauru deal. Canceled visas that are under appeal in court would be canceled by the new law.<\/p>\n

The center\u2019s deputy chief executive Jana Favero said the legislation could enable 80,000 people to be deported.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s tens of thousands of lives at risk \u2014 not the tiny number the government would have Australians believe,\u201d Favero said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Albanese said the full details of the agreement would be made public simultaneously by both governments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019re complexities and detail here, including the number of people who go,\u201d Albanese said.<\/p>\n

An Australian High Court decision in 2023 overturned the government\u2019s policy of leaving in detention immigrants who failed Australia\u2019s character test, usually because of criminal conduct. The government said they could not be deported.<\/p>\n

Countries including Afghanistan are considered unsafe for their nationals to be repatriated. Iran refuses to accept Iranians who are not returning voluntarily.<\/p>\n

The test case was brought by a member of Myanmar\u2019s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority identified in court as NZYQ. He was brought to Australia in a smuggler\u2019s boat in 2012, and raped a child soon after being released into the Australian community. He served a prison sentence and was then transferred into indefinite immigration detention until he won his court case.<\/p>\n

More than 200 immigrants who cannot be deported have been released from detention as a result of the NZYQ case. Some have committed more crimes and have returned to prison.<\/p>\n

Burke announced in February that three violent criminals<\/a>, including a convicted murderer, had been issued with 30-year visas to live in Nauru. But their deportations have been challenged in Australian courts.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow the AP\u2019s global migration coverage at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/migration<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MELBOURNE, Australia — Australia will pay the small Pacific island of Nauru to resettle foreign-born criminals who the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110821,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[79346,4225,64,63,2973,482,74956,9281,25213,44,84,1346],"class_list":["post-110820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-79346","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-courts","tag-general-news","tag-immigrant-detention","tag-immigration","tag-legislation","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}