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More than 100,000 people with rejected asylum seeker applications have stayed in Australia, many of whom are now undocumented workers, in a sign of the government’s ongoing struggle to make people leave the country once their visa claims are ruled invalid.
The record number was reached in August and has grown by 15,000 in the past year, despite attempts to clamp down on exploitation of the protection visa scheme that exists for people fleeing persecution. Just 14 per cent of asylum claims the Home Affairs Department processed last financial year were deemed to be legitimate.
Experts have for years warned that wait times for protection claims have created a loophole that allows people whose temporary visas have expired to keep working in Australia by applying for asylum and then entering a drawn-out appeal process. It also means those found to be genuine refugees are forced to wait years for security.
There were 23,576 people who applied for asylum in Australia in the 2024-25 financial year – slightly below the 25,210 who made claims the year before, when applications reached a six-year high. Applicants from India overtook those from Vietnam and China in putting in the largest number of claims, at about 11 per cent of the caseload.
Latest data analysed by this masthead shows the department has improved the pace at which it decides on protection visa claims. It ruled on almost 29,000 asylum applications in the most recent financial year – about 4000 were deemed genuine – compared with the 19,700 processed the year before.
That has helped reduce the backlog of people waiting for a protection visa decision: from 32,807 people at its peak in March 2024, to 26,715 people at the end of last month, which is its lowest level in more than two years.
But people aren’t leaving Australia at pace once their claims are rejected.
This means the number of people whose claims have been refused but remain in the country – they either move on to bridging visas by lodging an appeal, or become undocumented – continues to grow. That figure was 79,259 people in March 2024. By August 2025, it had ballooned to 100,157 people.
Almost 43,000 people were appealing their visa rejection at the Administrative Review Tribunal at the end of May this year.
“What’s happened over the last decade is just phenomenal. It’s an extraordinary growth in undocumented workers in Australia,” said Abul Rizvi, a former department deputy secretary who now analyses immigration data.
“It started in about 2015, when there was a labour trafficking scam that took off out of Malaysia and China. That has died down. But after that, a lot of people opportunistically saw the backlog was so big and lodged an asylum application to extend their stay in Australia. Many would have been advised to do so by scam agents.
“We had a massively growing backlog which wasn’t being processed. Now, we have a massive backlog that is being processed, but the people coming out the other end aren’t departing. Unless the government invests a lot more money in dealing with the issue, I can’t see the trend changing.”
Scam agent crackdown and quicker processing needed
Rizvi said the cost of locating, detaining and deporting undocumented people was significant. “You’d have to run compliance operations at key workplaces, like farms and construction sites, and you would be checking people’s identity and visa status,” he said.
“But the size of the immigration compliance function is so small that the odds of these people being picked up is tiny.”
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Rivzi said the department needed to assess asylum claims from the back of the queue, which it had started doing. “If you lodge a weak application today, you should get a decision within 72 hours. If you go to the [tribunal to review it], they should give you a decision quickly, and you should be the person targeted for removal,” he said.
“By speeding that front end up, what you do is stabilise the situation. The incentive to lodge a weak application evaporates. You then end up with people only with strong claims applying, which is what was always intended.”
Another factor was cracking down on scam agents. Home Affairs this month put out a statement saying it had removed four major scam agents operating illegally in Victoria and Queensland, and had detained a further three.
Home Affairs said the seven agents had worked on 470 protection visa applications between them, charging clients more than $1.4 million despite not being allowed to provide migration advice.
“Our focus is on scam agents providing unlawful migration advice about applying for a protection (subclass 866) visa, charging high fees and encouraging applicants to make false claims. A protection visa is for asylum seekers, not for people who just want to stay longer in Australia to work.“
Home Affairs was contacted for comment.
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