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Officials have stopped almost two dozen women at the border suspected of being sex-trafficked into Australia, amid a crackdown on organised criminal syndicates rorting the visa system to enable human trafficking.
The Australian Border Force is also targeting more than 175 people in Australia and overseas who are suspected of being involved with criminal groups.
Since November last year, border officials have intercepted 22 women suspected of coming to Australia from overseas to work in the sex industry. Intelligence from law enforcement agencies suggests not all were entering Australia against their will.
The women, who travelled from Vietnam, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, China, Japan, Cambodia and South Korea, were refused entry into Australia on the grounds they were non-genuine travellers planning to work in breach of their visa conditions. Most were intercepted in Sydney and Cairns.
Border Force has launched a month-long crackdown on migrant-worker abuses. Officers will visit more than 200 workplaces nationwide across the food, construction, mining and manufacturing industries.
Border Force acting Commander Vaughan Baxter said migrant worker exploitation – which included wage underpayment, pressure to work in breach of visa conditions, excessive hours, visa cancellation threats, and unsafe work conditions – risked damaging Australia’s standing on the world stage.
“Migrant workers play a key role in filling Australia’s labour shortages and supporting a thriving economy. If they are underpaid or exploited it is not only unfair to migrants, but has the potential to damage our international reputation.
“These unscrupulous employers should consider themselves on notice,” Baxter said.
The crackdown will also incorporate Operation Inglenook, a multi-agency taskforce led by Border Force to target individuals suspected of being involved in human trafficking and modern slavery within the sex industry.
The taskforce was launched last November after an investigation by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, 60 Minutes and Stan’s Revealed documentary program showed how global human-trafficking syndicates were exploiting flaws in Australia’s border security and immigration system to run illegal sex rings.
The exploitation was aided by networks of federal government-licensed migration agents, education colleges and fixers who enabled “visa farms” to be used by crime syndicate bosses to gain repeated entry into Australia for syndicate members and those being exploited as indentured labour.
The Trafficked investigative series exposed how Binjun Xie, a Sydney-based crime boss nicknamed “The Hammer”, was able to enter Australia in 2014 and build a criminal underground sex empire despite having previously been jailed in the UK for running a similar operation.
The investigation prompted Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil to order an urgent independent inquiry into the failings of Australia’s migration system.
The inquiry, conducted by former Victoria Police chief commissioner Christine Nixon, found Border Force had limited legislative powers and resources to investigate visa and migration fraud and the exploitation of temporary migrant workers.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
O’Neil said the work being done by Border Force and other agencies sent a strong signal that exploitation and abuse in Australian workplaces would not be tolerated.
“All migrant workers in our country should be able to rely on the same rights and protections, but unfortunately, we [the Labor government] inherited a migration system which was rife with exploitation of vulnerable migrant workers,” O’Neil said.
Human Rights Law Centre managing lawyer Sanmati Verma said the key to tackling migrant worker exploitation was to rebuild Australia’s migration system from the ground up to protect foreign workers and encourage them to speak out against abuse without risking deportation.
“When you have these operations picking up vulnerable people, there is no visa that they can automatically transition on to that would allow them to seek redress against their employer or participate in investigations against them,” Verma said.
“That means that you are going to have vulnerable people who are liable for deportation from the country, and that is such a fundamental flaw in the way that our system operates.”
The centre is among the groups calling for victims of workplace exploitation to be protected against visa cancellations and for the introduction of temporary visas to allow workers to remain in Australia while seeking redress from their employers.
The federal government has introduced a bill to parliament to amend migration laws to criminalise coercing someone into breaching their visa conditions and to repeal provisions that leave exploited workers who breach their visa conditions facing deportation.
If passed, the legislation would also prohibit employers and other third parties found to have exploited workers from hiring temporary migrants and increase penalties for those caught misusing Australia’s migration programs.
A report by the Grattan Institute released in May found recent migrants to Australia were 40 per cent more likely to be underpaid than long-term residents with the same skills and experience working in the same job.
Data from the Fair Work Ombudsman shows temporary visa holders accounted for 26 per cent of all litigation initiated for breaches to the Fair Work Act in 2021-22, despite making up just 4 per cent of the workforce nationally.
Immigration, Citizenship, and Multicultural Affairs Minister Andrew Giles said the underpayment of migrant workers hurt all Australians by driving wages and work conditions down.
“Work conditions can’t be a race to the bottom. That’s why the government has introduced a bill into parliament to help workers speak up and target employers who do the wrong thing,” he said.
“Regardless of where you’ve come from or your visa status, everyone should be safe at work.”
Migrant worker exploitation can be reported anonymously to the Department of Home Affairs’ Border Watch website.
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