Australia's Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock has been asked to establish a special visa category in a bid to allow a group of East Timorese to stay in the country.

The special visa would apply to about 18-hundred East Timorese asylum seekers who are facing deportation.

The President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference, Archbishop Francis Carroll, says its the second time he's written to the Minister urging him to give the group sympathetic consideration.

He says many of the asylum seekers have been living in Australia for more than eight years, and have children who have been born and raised in this society.

He says, "I spoke with the minister briefly on one occasion, and he outlined a few cases where there would be a successful application, but certainly there was no likelihood of his granting the special category of visa that we had asked for."