Illegal Immigrant: "Get me outa here"

Mr Qasim ... will do whatever it takes to leave Australia.
I'm a Kashmiri, get me out of here
By Elizabeth Colman and Tom Richardson
March 24, 2005
From:
News.com.au

Mr Qasim ... will do whatever it takes to leave Australia.
LONG-SERVING detainee Peter Qasim has begged to be deported from Australia, saying he will go wherever immigration authorities can find that will accept him and he will go immediately.
As such, he appears to be a prime candidate for the Government's new "removal pending visa", which allows those who have given up their fight to stay in Australia to live freely in the community until they can be deported.
But Mr Qasim faces a substantial hurdle because the Immigration Department insists he has been "unco-operative".
If he can convince immigration authorities - and, in turn, minister Amanda Vanstone - that he is, as he claims, a Kashmiri unable to secure travel papers, he will be released on the removal pending visa unveiled by Senator Vanstone yesterday.
Mr Qasim, who is in South Australia's Baxter detention centre, said yesterday he had repeatedly asserted that "if India is willing to give me travel documents, then I will go home".
"It's no problem for me if they send me to India - I just want to be out of here," he said.
Until her announcement yesterday, Senator Vanstone had refused to consider Mr Qasim's release from detention after six years behind razor wire, on the basis that he had changed the story he initially gave to officials.
She said new information had been provided by Dick Smith -- a self-described "friend of the Prime Minister" -- that she had passed on to the department.
"I've been asked by Dick Smith to look at some material that he's put forward to me in relation to Mr Qasim," Senator Vanstone said.
"There are two aspects there. One is separate information that the department is considering at this point and the second is his co-operation levels."
The new material, obtained by The Australian, alleges the department "mishandled and misrepresented" the Qasim case. A document, prepared by an advocate for Mr Qasim, Greg Egan, states, among a list of concerns, that the department did not use a translator in its initial interviews with Mr Qasim.