Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is expected to announce a major policy shift in asylum seekers as he prepares to announce a date for the federal election.
The overall rate of asylum seekers has increased this year - and Iranians have become the largest group of people arriving by boat.
Last month, Foreign Minister Bob Carr said he believed the spike of arrivals from Iran indicated that many, if not all, were economic migrants.
“The fact is, these people are middle-class Iranians. They're leaving their country because of the economic pressures," he told ABC's AM program.
Professor William Maley, Director of the Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy at the Australian National University says there is no evidence to back Senator Carr's claim.
“It's virtually impossible to know that and Senator Carr certainly can't know that because since the 13th of August last year the Immigration Department has not been processing applications for asylum from people arriving by boat,” Mr Maley says.
He says Senator Carr is “talking through his hat and drawing on stereotypes on refugees”.
Mr Maley says just because someone is from the middle-class doesn't mean that they aren't refugees.
“Somebody could easily be a member of an ethnic or religious minority in a country and still have a well-founded fear of being persecuted under a convention reason.” He says.
Of the 15,182 asylum-seekers who have arrived by boat in Australia this year, 5054 have come from Iran – a marked increase on the 2749 Iranians who came in the full 2012 calendar year.
One option to stop the flow of asylum seekers from Iran is to extend the governments so called “enhanced screening” program. The government has used "enhanced screening" to send more than 1,000 asylum seekers from Sri Lanka straight home, just days after they arrived.
But Mr Maley says Iran's government must agree to take Iranian asylum seekers back.
“The government of Sri Lanka is happy for people of that country to be returned. Iran has taken a different position that it's not setting up to welcome back people who've sought asylum in other countries. And Australian officials are reportedly seeking to pursue an agreement with Iran by which such returns could be carried out. But the Iranians would probably demand a price for that.”
Mr Maley says if the government is serious about preventing deaths at sea, Mr Rudd will need to boost Australia's refugee resettlement numbers.
“If Australia were to think of resettling, 20,000 to 30,000 people from a country like Indonesia that would break the back of the people smuggling networks because the realistic prospect in Indonesia of being resettled would be high enough for the boat voyage to look like an unappealing option.”
But Mr Maley says that would cost more money.
“In a way this will test if political leaders really care about preventing deaths at sea or if they're only prepared to do so if you can do so on the cheap.”
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