Dozens of asylum seekers who applied for resettlement in Australia have been rejected after failing security checks or being deemed economic migrants rather than genuine refugees, according to Sky News.
Federal Minister for Immigration Peter Dutton told the Australian parliament that thirty applicants had been rejected after being red flagged by Five Eyes – the world-beating intelligence sharing network formed by Britain, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
“We have taken a long period of time to look at the biometrics and look at individual cases,” Mr. Dutton told Sky News.
“We have excluded a large number of cases and I think we have ended up with people who are deserving of support, who were targeted by the IS particularly in Syria and Iraq. We’ve chosen people who will make a big contribution and who will want to educate their kids and integrate into Australian society.”
“We should be very pleased and proud as a nation that we have been able to help,” he said, claiming that Australian government has placed an emphasis on sheltering refugees from the Middle East’s embattled Christian and Yazidi minorities.
“We were very clear when we set up this programme that we wanted to concentrate on persecuted minorities. Like the Yazidi women who have watched family members slaughtered, their sisters and daughters abducted and murdered these are genuine refugees.”
Australia has experienced a number of terror events since Islamic State proclaimed a worldwide caliphate under Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in June 2014.
In September 2014, Abdul Numan Haider stabbed two police counter-terrorism officers in Endeavour Hills, Melbourne.
In December 2014 Iranian migrant Man Haron Monis took 18 people hostage in a Sydney cafe, killing one after a long stand-off before armed police stormed the premises.
In October 2015 Iranian-born Farhad Khalil Mohammad Jabar shot and killed an unarmed police support worker at the News South Wales Police headquarters in Paramatta.
At least another 15 major terrorist attacks have been foiled in Australia before they could take place since 2014.
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