Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has announced an October 1 cut-off for more than 7000 asylum seekers to apply for a temporary protection visa or face deportation.
He said asylum seekers have been residing in Australia for years on government benefits, which last year cost about $250-million in income support alone.
Until individual processes are finalised, the government will continue to provide Medicare support, allow children to attend school and allow people to work, but would not provide income support, until deportation is arranged.
Sarah Dale is the Principal Solicitor at the Refugee Advice Casework Service, a not-for-profit legal centre offering free legal support.
"I am crippled with fear as to what will happen to the people that we serve," she said.
"We have seen thousands of people come through the doors at RACS... What we are doing to the community of people seeking asylum is horrific."
Mr Dutton said some asylum seekers are refusing to submit paperwork and do not deserve to be receiving welfare.
"These are people who have been here for five, six, seven years claiming to be refugees but won't provide any information, won't answer questions, in some cases won't provide information about their identity," he told the Nine Network.
Lawyers say despite the documents being complex and onerous, not everyone had the opportunity to apply.
"People that arrived by boat were only able to apply for visas once invited by the Department of Immigration to do so," Ms Dale said. "There are people that have only received those invitations at the end of last year."
RACS is concerned this new announcement targets those most vulnerable.
The legal centre said it prioritised people who were sent letters from the Immigration Department, who were mostly single, adult males.
"Legal centres such as RACS responded to that emerging need and we started processing those people with reminder letters. We moved them to the top of our queue," Ms Dale said.
"What that meant is that many of the people that are now at the bottom of the queue are families with children because they weren't receiving these reminder letters."
But lawyers are not giving up.
"Where we don't afford people a fair, due and proper process, we are not affording them procedural fairness and we are not affording them natural justice," Ms Dale said.
"So ultimately as lawyers, we are going to be left to fight this in the courts to ensure that people's voices are heard."
Minister Dutton, though, is undeterred.
"They expect me to grant visas, allow some people to become citizens, when we don't even know the identity of these people. The lawyers can rant all they want," he said.
