The main union for public servants, the CPSU, has expressed concerns the department’s absorption of ASIO and the Australian Federal Police would result in less attention on traditional immigration issues.
"We are concerned that making the Immigration Department the base of a home affairs portfolio could mean a potential downgrading of Australia's core immigration and settlement functions," CPSU secretary Nadine Flood told .
The union said the absorption of Customs, which resulted in the creation of Border Force under Mr Dutton’s portfolio, created a disruption that “is still not fully bedded down after more than two years”.
But Mr Dutton maintains he will be able to take on the extra responsibilities without any loss to Immigration.
“There’s already a national security aspect to this portfolio,” Mr Dutton told reporters at Parliament House on Wednesday.
Managing counter-terrorism officers at international airports is already part of the Immigration minister’s role.
Mr Dutton said his department works with the intelligence agencies to vet visa applicants, saying ASIO and the AFP worked on background checks for the recently settled extra 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees who were fleeing the Syrian civil war.
The former Defence department secretary Ric Smith told the ABC he feared Immigration would become “a small part, a backwater part, of a big portfolio.”
