Australia's national security is being compromised by wide-scale visa rorting and migration rackets, including one involving a facilitator with suspected Pakistan terrorist links, media reports have said, prompting an urgent probe into the claims.
Hundreds of pages of leaked confidential departmental documents obtained by Fairfax Media show that Australia's national security is being compromised by visa rorting and migration rackets.
Rampant visa fraud and migration crime involving people flying into Australia are going unchecked while the government focuses on stopping boats, according to the secret government files detailing entrenched Immigration Department failings.
The confidential Immigration Department files show repeated internal warnings over several years that widespread visa fraud is "business as usual yet remains largely untreated" because the department's investigation and enforcement capacity has collapsed, the report said.
Secret departmental operations have estimated that as many as nine in 10 skilled migrant visas may be fraudulent, while an internal inquiry into Afghan visa applicants in 2012 assessed that more than 90 per cent of cases contained "fraud of some type" and raised "people smuggling, identity fraud, suspected child trafficking and national security implications", Fairfax said.
Also, a 2010 report shows that immigration investigators had uncovered a Somali people-smuggling cell in Melbourne linked to terrorist suspect Hussein Hashi Farah, who "is believed to have links to the al-Qaeda offshoot al-Shabab" and who fled Kenyan counter-terrorism officials using an Australian passport in 2010.
But the departmental file shows that a 2009 investigation into the cell's activities was "deemed low priority and ceased due to a lack of resources".
Another file details a migration crime network involving a facilitator with suspected Pakistan terrorist links, along with "migration agents, employers and education providers who are linked to a significant level of organised fraud and crime".
Fairfax Media has confirmed this network was never properly probed, allowing many of its members -- including federal government licensed agents to continue to operate.
The reports prompted Immigration Minister Scott Morrison today to order an urgent investigation into the rampant visa fraud claims.
Morrison said the issues related to when the former Labor government was in office, but ordered urgent answers from his own department.
"Given the government's strong commitment in this area, I have sought an urgent report from my department on these matters and will consider what further action is then necessary after receiving this initial response," he said.
