Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said that he is confident that the refugee resettlement deal struck last year with the US will hold under President Donald Trump.
Turnbull’s government and the Obama administration agreed to resettle to the United States more than 1,300 asylum seekers being held in Australian-run offshore detention facilities on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.
Australian officials have been lobbying senior Trump advisers to stick to the deal amid concerns that it could be affected by his tough stance on migrants and refugees.
But Turnbull said Thursday he is confident the agreement will go forward and that the government was “certainly pushing ahead” with the deal, alongside “extensive discussions with the Trump administration, with whom we have very strong links and ties at many levels.”
“I am confident we will maintain the arrangements we have entered into with the previous administration. They are in the interests of both parties,” he told reporters in Canberra.
Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said he had direct talks with US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly.
“We would like for that (deal) to continue with the Trump administration but we are working with the Trump officials at the moment,” Dutton told Sydney radio 2GB. “They will make decisions that affect their administration and we respect that ... We respect the fact it’s a decision for President Trump.”
Turnbull’s government announced the US deal in November, just a week after Trump’s election. American officials have already visited Nauru and Manus Island and apparently told refugees that interviews for potential resettlement would begin next month.
Earlier this week, the White House said Trump would soon sign executive orders to apply “extreme vetting” of “people who are from a country who has a propensity to do us harm.”
US media have reported the executive orders could suspend the US refugee programme and impose new entry restrictions on people from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Iranians make up the bulk of the refugees currently in limbo on Nauru and Manus Island, as well as those from Syria, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce on Thursday said it would not be the end of the world if the deal collapses, without elaborating on what would happen to the refugees in those detention centres. 
Joyce said he was hoping that the “well-planned and well-thought out” deal would go ahead, but added it’s a case of wait-and-see.
Australia currently turns back all boats carrying asylum seekers trying to reach its shores. 
The people being held at Manus and Nauru had journeyed by boat to Australia after July 2013, when the government changed its procedures and started processing asylum requests offshore, but before the current hardline policy went into full force.
UN officials and human rights groups have slammed the government’s approach to the asylum seekers, as well as the conditions of the refugees in the detention camps, saying it is cruel and amounts to torture, as reports of sexual assaults and self harm have surfaced.
Earlier this week, Turnbull suffered a major policy blow after Trump announced the withdrawal from 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, which Australia had touted as “a gigantic foundation stone” for the economy.


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