Irish among group of workers held in Australia

Irish construction workers are among a group of 80 illegal workers who have been detained by Australian authorities.

The Australian Immigration Department said 80 illegal workers had been detained in the past week in a crackdown on building sites around Sydney.

A series of raids targetting the construction industry netted illegal workers from South Korea, China, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Fiji, the Ukraine as well as Ireland.

"The series of operations were undertaken following a number of reports from numerous sources about illegal workers in the construction industry," a department spokesman said in a statement.

The department said immigration officers made regular visits to workplaces across Australia, such as restaurants, farms, shops, office, factories and brothels, in a bid to find people in the country illegally or working in breach of visas.

In the year ending June 30th, 2002, the department located 17,307 people working illegally, a jump on 14,238 detected the previous year.

The current crackdown on the building industry was part of the government's ongoing battle to stem illegal immigration.

Australia's conservative government has faced a barrage of international criticism for its policies of detaining all illegal immigrants in guarded camps while their cases are handled and for sealing its borders to asylum seekers arriving by boat.

Last week ten Irish nationals were deported from the United States for overstaying their visas. The ten were living and working in Boston.

Some had overstayed by just weeks while others had been living and working in the country illegally for a number of years.

additional reporting AFP