For Jane Smith**, the next few months in Australia could be her last in Australia.
She has lodged a claim for protection but her fate now rests with the Immigration Department.
"It’s kind of like sitting on the edge of hell. You don’t know which time you will fall down on the fire. You’re kind of waiting for someone to push you in," she told SBS News.
The young woman has been in living in limbo for years after arriving by boat via Indonesia and spending time in detention on Christmas Island.
The tense waiting game to find out whether she will be able to stay in Australia is one she shares with more than 7000 asylum seekers who have until October 1 to make a claim for protection.
The non-negotiable cut-off date was announced by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton in May.
"We’re not going to allow boats to restart and we’re not going to allow economic migrants to take the place of legitimate refugees," Mr Dutton told reporters in Brisbane on Friday.
'It's out of my hands'
The applicants who are not successful will be cut off from government payments and be subject to deportation.
“I’m worried about it of course. I’m stressing about it. Of course I feel depressed sometimes about it but it’s out of my hands,” Jane Smith said.
Migration lawyers who are helping with a backlog of applications say women and children are the worst affected in the rush to lodge claims particularly single mothers required to fill out a form for each child.
The initial form consists of more than 40 pages and requires applicants to include their entire residential history.
“For every additional family member, that’s another odd 20 page form. Even two month old babies require one of these forms to be filled in,” principal solicitor at Refugee Advice and Casework Service, Sarah Dale, told SBS News.
Asylum seekers can seek legal assistance but free legal services are at maximum capacity as lawyers work to get through thousands of applications.
Refugee advocates report six-fold increase in workload
The Refugee Advice and Casework Service in Sydney has quadrupled its services to meet demand as staff work in excess of 70 hours a week. It now runs two evening clinics and has engaged five commercial law firms to offer their services pro bono.
“We had waiting lists constantly in excess of 1000. Previously before this deadline we were trying to meet with 20 people a week. We were trying to get through 20 applications a week. Now due to this deadline we’re averaging 125 appointments a week,” Ms Dale told SBS News.
“We’ve seen a significant rise in the distress and anxiety of the people that we’re serving.”
Senior Research Associate at the Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, Sangeetha Pillai, says the application forms are highly technical and difficult for people to fill out, no matter how high their level of English.
“Obviously for people that come from foreign countries and don’t speak English that makes it all the harder,” Ms Pillai told SBS News.
“Errors can be very costly. If there’s a problem with the form then that tends to lead to claims for refugee status being rejected and removal from Australia. So, it’s important to do it right, but the queues are really really long and not everybody has had a lot of time to get an application in.”
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Immigration Minister Peter Dutton disagrees.
“We are a generous big-hearted nation providing support to refugees – 865,000 people since the Second World War – but we are not going to be taken for a ride," he said.
"I have been clear that people have had multiple opportunities to furnish information, to provide the information that has been requested by my department and for a long period of time people have refused to engage in that process. They have been on welfare in the interim,” Mr Dutton said.
“If people can’t make out their claims to be legitimate refugees then we will work with them to return back to their countries of origin.”
Lawyers say applicants have only had months to apply, not years
But lawyers working to help with applications maintain the majority of the asylum seekers facing the October 1 deadline were only eligible to apply within the last six months once they were formally invited to.
“Letters weren’t sent to all people seeking asylum at once. It was a staggered process so it’s a real misconception that people have had many years to apply,” Ms Dale said.
Jane Smith says she moved straight away when she found out she could apply for protection, but needed legal help to do so.
“The questions are really hard. It’s kind of like a legal term. It’s not like normal English, you can’t just put it in Google and translate it,” she said.
The group of 7500 asylum seekers in question is part of the so-called legacy caseload of 30,500 people who arrived by boat between August 2012 and January 2014, but were not processed under the former Labor government.
**name changed to protect identity
