Australian immigration authorities took more than three months to tell a Lankan refugee designated a security threat that the United States had rejected his bid to join an uncle living in Texas - dashing his hope of escaping legal limbo in Australia.

Britain and the US have both now refused the government’s overtures to resettle three of the 51 recognised refugees held in detention, despite being home to relatives of the men.

The rejection highlights the plight of the 51 mostly Tamil refugees who are unable to return home but refused visas for release in Australia and not permitted to appeal the secret intelligence assessments judging them a threat.

In what is the most recent evidence the government is seeking other countries as a home for the blacklisted group, The Saturday Age has obtained letters telling three men their bid to join family overseas had failed.

One of the men - a Tamil who fled the Sri Lankan civil war - has been held in detention since June 2010 when he arrived on a boat at Christmas Island.

He was judged a refugee, only to be given an adverse security assessment by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. He is not allowed to know the reasons for the ruling. After being told to consider resettlement in another country, the man sought to join an uncle in Texas but was advised by the Immigration Department on May 16 that US authorities would not consider his case.

But the US had told the department of its decision on February 15 - leaving the man with more than three months of false hope.

Two other men had asked to join their sister in Britain, but all three were advised on the same day they had been rejected. The department refused to comment on communication with the men, whom The Saturday Age has chosen not to identify.

The lack of effective appeal to the ASIO findings has been criticised by lawyers and Labor backbenchers as a denial of natural justice.

Refugee advocates also fear for the welfare of the group after a spate of suicide attempts among those with ASIO adverse assessments.

Several children are caught in the impasse with their parents. A pregnant Sri Lankan woman, Ranjini, and her two children were taken into custody in Sydney’s Villawood detention centre this month after being given a negative assessment. She had lived in Melbourne for more than a year.

The full bench of the High Court is expected to begin hearing a challenge to the indefinite detention of refugees with negative security findings, run by the same legal team that successfully scuttled Labor’s so-called ‘‘Malaysia solution’’.

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon this week said the government was examining the assessment regime but any change was ‘‘complex’’ and unlikely before the court dealt with the case.

Labor passed a resolution at its national conference last year calling for a national security monitor to review ASIO findings against refugees.

Alternatives to indefinite detention have been proposed, including special visas that require people to report regularly to police and only have a single telephone.

Australia has only once in the past decade managed to convince another country to resettle a refugee judged a security threat from its detention network - and previously refused a US request to become home to a group of Chinese Uighurs formerly imprisoned as accused terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay camp.

The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Australia has told those people with negative ASIO assessments that it is concerned by the prolonged detention of refugees and asylum seekers in Australia.

But the agency said Australia’s international obligation made it responsible for their protection and it did not normally relocate refugees out of Australia. – Brisbane Times