Visa offered to Qasim after seven years in detention

[dArKeR]

An asylum seeker who has been locked up for seven years in immigrant detention centers in Australia was yesterday offered a visa that could see him set free within days, the government has announced.
Peter Qasim, who claims to be from the Indian part of disputed Kashmir region, has been in detention longer than any other asylum seeker locked up under Canberra's mandatory detention policy.

Supporters say Qasim cannot be deported because he has no passport or other papers proving his nationality, and Delhi no longer considers him an Indian citizen.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/06/21/2003260145

"detention center" is the same as "prison".

[Djinn]

1. the "return pending" visas are a cruel joke

they can be revoked at any time and it's most likely (asylum seeker advocates and lawyers still making sense of them) they will require the signing away of any right to future asylum claims.

it was bad enough that we invented "Temporary Protection Visa's" giving people a few years of certainty before they became month by month propositions - this visa is a day by day proposition, and given Qasim's present mental state, frankly nothing but cruel.

oh and detention centre's aren't the same as prisons, in prison you get rights, have to have been at least charged with a crime, access to visitors, a finite sentence etc