Weber Leanne, Gerard Alison
Canberra Law School, University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
Front Sociol. 2024 Apr 10;9:1336160. doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2024.1336160. eCollection 2024.
Australia has been widely condemned for its harsh and comprehensive external border controls that seek to control the inward mobility of would-be asylum seekers through visa denial, interdiction and offshore detention. Less widely discussed is the fact that internal controls have been repeatedly ramped up over the past two decades. This includes the administrative removal of lawfully-present non-citizens following visa cancellation on character grounds under s501 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth). Automatic visa cancellation was introduced in 2014 for non-citizens sentenced to a prison term of 12 months or more, or for certain offences, bypassing individualised decision-making and raising the spectre of a visa cancellation pipeline feeding a highly automated deportation machinery. In an age of increasingly automated forms of governance, a key question that arises is the role that has been played by automated systems in achieving what has been a seismic shift in practice, and the normative implications of any developments towards automation within the visa cancellation and removal systems. This paper outlines the shift towards automation in other systems of governance in Australia-most notably the notorious Robodebt scheme-before examining automation in Australia's visa cancellation system. Documentary analysis of recent parliamentary inquiries, independent reports and government policy is used to piece together the development of inter-agency data exchange practices and automation over three specific periods-historical practice pre-2014, post-2014 to the present, and proposed future developments. We conclude that Australia's s501 visa cancellation system is neither automated nor automatic. Rather, the 2014 law reform gave rise to a 'surveillance fantasy' with immense consequences for non-citizens, particularly those who face long days in immigration detention at the conclusion of their prison sentence. We show that while concerns about increasing automation are well-founded, systems based on less sophisticated forms of information handling and reliant on human decision-making nevertheless continue to raise age-old questions concerning efficiency, accuracy and fairness.
澳大利亚因其严厉且全面的外部边境管控措施而广受谴责，这些措施旨在通过拒发签证、拦截和境外拘留来控制潜在寻求庇护者的入境流动。而在过去二十年里，澳大利亚不断加强内部管控这一事实却较少被讨论。这包括依据1958年《澳大利亚联邦移民法》第501条，以品行问题为由取消签证后，对合法在澳的非公民进行行政驱逐。2014年起，对于被判处12个月及以上监禁刑期的非公民或因某些罪行被判刑的非公民，实行自动签证取消制度，绕过了个性化决策，引发了人们对签证取消流水线为高度自动化驱逐机制输送人员的担忧。在治理形式日益自动化的时代，一个关键问题是自动化系统在实现这一实践中的巨大转变中所起的作用，以及签证取消和驱逐系统内自动化发展的规范影响。本文在审视澳大利亚签证取消系统的自动化之前，先概述了澳大利亚其他治理系统向自动化的转变——最显著的是臭名昭著的“机器人债务”计划。通过对近期议会调查、独立报告和政府政策的文献分析，梳理出跨部门数据交换实践和自动化在三个特定时期的发展情况——2014年之前的历史实践、2014年至今以及提议的未来发展。我们得出结论，澳大利亚的第501条签证取消系统既不是自动化的，也不是自动执行的。相反，2014年的法律改革催生了一种“监控幻想”，给非公民带来了巨大影响，尤其是那些在刑期结束后面临长时间移民拘留的人。我们表明，虽然对自动化程度不断提高的担忧是有充分依据的，但基于不太复杂的信息处理形式且依赖人工决策的系统，仍然会引发有关效率、准确性和公平性的长期问题。
