Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has hit out at "advocates and others" who he believes are pressuring refugees to "behave in a certain way", saying the Federal Government will not be persuaded to change its border protection policies.

Twenty-one-year-old Somali refugee Hodan Yasin has been transferred to Australia in a critical condition after setting herself on fire on Monday.

It follows the death of Iranian asylum seeker Omid Masoumali, who also self-immolated on the island.

Speaking in Canberra this morning, Mr Dutton accused advocates of providing false hope to those have been held in offshore detention.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-03/peter-dutton-says-refugees-encouraged-by-advocates-nauru/7378938

Putting aside for a moment that Australia takes refugees not because it needs their skills but because they need its protection, Peter Dutton was wrong in his statements to Sky News. The immigration minister’s own department, other branches of government, the parliamentary library and the bureaucrats who work for him say so.

Dutton said on Sky on Tuesday night:

For many people, they won’t be, you know, numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English. These people would be taking Australian jobs, there’s no question about that.

For many of them that would be unemployed, they would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare and the rest of it so there would be huge cost and there’s no sense in sugar-coating that, that’s the scenario.

What does the immigration department say?

Here’s what Dutton’s own department says about the social and economic contribution made by refugees to Australia:

In 2011 the department of immigration and citizenship (as the Department of Immigration and Border Protection was then called) commissioned a report by the University of Adelaide academic Prof Graeme Hugo. Hugo’s report is here.

The department’s own summation of Hugo’s findings (still available on the department website) reads:

The research found the overwhelming picture, when one takes the longer term perspective of changes over the working lifetime of humanitarian program entrants and their children, is one of considerable achievement and contribution.

 

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/may/18/fact-check-was-peter-dutton-right-about-illiterate-refugees-taking-jobs