According to the , asylum seekers are vulnerable to visa scammers who prey on them during the process of application; this could occur from the time they are displaced to when they arrive in their new country.
The Australian government has published material on how to apply for asylum in numerous languages, including Arabic. But despite the availability of this information, asylum seekers continue to fall victim to scams.
The Australian Department of Home Affairs has stipulated that the exact number of downstream operations was not known. This unfortunate phenomenon is known as Resettlement Fraud.
What to look for to avoid a scam
A mention of notable figures: During conversations with asylum seekers, fraudsters may drop the names of directors, ambassadors and ministers in order to convince the applicant of their perceived status within a country. This ploy is used to bolster the fraudster’s credibility and reputation to the asylum seeker.
To this point, , a man posing as an Australian MP told a displaced Syrian family that he was friends with the Australian ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The Home Affairs Department did not directly respond to SBS’s questions about whether the man had any relationship with the ambassador.
Free specialised assistance: Accredited immigration agents are usually paid a fee for their services, and specific service contracts are written up that stipulate the agent's fees and all required expenses. To this fact, a common move by scammers is to offer free asylum assistance and then mentioning a service carried out without incurring a charge. This move is intended to build trust between both parties and builds a sense of obligation towards the asylum seeker when payments are requested further into the process.
Sudden and urgent requests for payment: In this event, a fraudster would ask for money on the pretext of achieving the applicant’s goal quicker. Requesting quick and urgent payment is usually a ploy to extract more money from the asylum seeker and is usually designed to give an applicant insufficient time to thoroughly asses the feasibility of the payment request.
Fraudsters sometimes request payment for application documents, which are usually free to access via the Department of Immigration’s website.
The exploitation of an asylum seeker's lack of language knowledge: A refugee may lack knowledge of the language spoken in the country they are seeker asylum in, such as English, German or French. In this case, the fraudster would exploit the asylum seeker by inundating them with correspondence they do not understand or providing false and misleading explanations of official responses by immigration officials who may be processing their applications.
For more information on how to find an accredited asylum and immigration agent, or how to apply for asylum in Australia, visit the .
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