Much that concerns Australia is determined by the politics of the Asia– Pacific region. Control over migration, the economy and the composition of the society have been increasingly dictated by external influences and threats. Migration policy does not develop in peace. On the contrary, there have been more wars and revolutions than ever before and larger numbers fleeing from them and from persecution. As demand has grown, the Australian response has contracted. Permanent settlement has been modified by temporary visas for employment, education and family reunion. Racism no longer dictates policy, as it did for a century. But virtually all asylum seekers recently interned or returned have been from non-European societies.

Rather than individual persecution, international and civil wars became the major cause of seeking refuge, despite the official concentration on personal cases (Marrus 1985). This has escalated with the breakup of the French, British, Dutch, Belgian and Portuguese empires in Africa and Asia after 1945. The greatest numbers of those seeking refuge have often been created by persecution on an ethnic minority basis, rather than by international warfare, religious or ideological pressure. Little of this had directly affected Australia before the late 1930s, the rise of Nazi Germany and the persecution of the Jews from 1933. Today persecution is the dominant issue.

There are now more refugees in the world than ever before. They have a special status under the United Nations as deserving care and attention. That status is governed by the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees; the Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1967; and Resolution 2198 (xxi) adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. The Protocol covered the whole of the world and was ratified by Australia in 1967, despite the continuing operation of White Australia in its dying days. It was not ratified by most newly independent countries until recently nor, for different reasons, by the United States or the Soviet Union (Loescher 1993).

Previous mass movements caused by wars, revolutions and persecution had not normally received official refugee status before 1920. Nor were mass emigration movements in the nineteenth century, like the Jews from the Russian Empire or the Irish from the United Kingdom, been officially regarded as creating refugees. Recent civil wars and revolutions, however, do come within the responsibilities of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).