SYDNEY, Aug 12: The Australian government rejected charges on Monday that proposals to expand profiling of tourist visa applicants in a bid to curb illegal immigration were racist or would harm the multi-billion-dollar tourism industry.

The proposals under study by the immigration department would notably require some visitors from “high risk” countries to produce bank and employment records to obtain visas.

Suggestions included in a department discussion paper also included imposing higher fines on over-stayers and revoking licenses from tour groups which bring too many “runners” into the country.

Another proposal was to expand the department’s use of profiling of visitors considered likely to use tourism visas as a back-door route to permanent immigration.

Ethnic and tourism groups quickly voiced concern over the plans, first revealed by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper Monday, urging the government to proceed with caution.

Tony Pun of the Ethnic Communities Council of New South Wales said the government needed to ensure its profiling did not simply target non-Caucasians.

“It would appear that they are not concentrating on European countries,” he said on ABC radio. But a spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said there was nothing racist in the discussion paper and denied it represented a crackdown on visa over-stayers.

“The paper simply canvasses some of the issues that people might want to think about in terms of using risk factors in a different way,” she said.

Christopher Brown, chief executive of Australia’s Tourism Taskforce, said the government’s thinking could send the wrong message to countries that Australia increasingly relies on for tourism dollars.

“It is in the communications and the selling that the government can protect strategic borders of Australia while at the same time projecting some sort of image that this is not fortress Australia,” he said.—AFP