Tag: Refugees and Asylum Seekers

On Saturday 20 November, the Uniting Church Social Justice Unit along with many other community organisations and individuals joined together for a Hike 4 Humanity around the Kent Street Weir Park in Wilson. They are deeply concerned for the ongoing struggles of refugees on temporary visas living in our community with little hope of permanency and family reunion.

People like Salem Askari, a stonemason who has been working in the Perth building industry for the last eight years after fleeing Afghanistan as a refugee.

Salem is one of about 200 refugees on temporary visas who live in the Federal electorate of Swan – one of the main areas of Perth where refugees on temporary visas reside. They are working and living in the WA community but are stuck on temporary visas and can’t get their families to safety.

Salem says it was particularly devastating to see Kabul fall back into the hands of the Taliban when the Allied forces, including Australia, withdrew earlier this year.

“I am so stressed. It is really difficult to feel so helpless when your family are in such danger.”

Salem’s wife remains in Kabul and was working for the Afghan Government as a civil engineer up until the country fell. She is now in hiding, fearing for her life. He wishes he could sponsor her to come to Australia but since the Australian Government will only grant him a temporary visa, he is not permitted to bring her to safety.

“It is immensely frustrating. Eight years ago, I fled the same Taliban that my wife is now in danger from, but we still can’t be together, we can’t both be safe.

“I love living in Perth. Most of us have been here nearly a decade – we work hard, we pay tax, but we still are not allowed to settle. We want to invest in the community, we want to reunite with our family, but we need help to convince the Government to give us a permanent visa,” said Salem

Salem along with other refugees in his situation, and supporters in the WA Refugee and People Seeking Asylum Network (WARPSAN) of which the Uniting Church in WA is a member, have been organising to raise awareness of the difficulties of life on a temporary visa in a campaign called We All Need Our Families. The Hike 4 Humanity was planned as a family-friendly event to help launch the campaign and was successfully attended by approximately 160 people on the sunny Saturday morning.

The hike began with a welcome to Country by Clive Smith and his son Donald, both proud Wadjak Ballardong men, and then Salem shared some of his story along with Dr Hessom Razavi, a former refugee from Iran, now a writer and ophthalmologist based in Perth. Wendy Hendry from the Social Justice Unit was the MC, and gave attendees an overview of the campaign, and encouraged people to get involved, learn more and take action. An enthusiastic group of volunteers helped make it a successful event, marshalling participants around the hike circuit, finishing at the CARAD Fare Go food truck.

Geoff Bice, Executive Officer: Social Justice says “The Uniting Church in Australia is a long-standing advocate of the just treatment of people seeking asylum. We All Need Our Families is a community campaign to help put a spotlight on the cruelty of keeping people on a treadmill of temporary visas. We continue to hear the heartache of refugees and people seeking asylum who have fled the likes of the Taliban but are now powerless to help their direct family escape the same persecution.”

Geoff encouraged people to find out more about the refugees caught in this cycle of uncertainty, and about how to get involved by going to the We All Need Our Families website.

To find out more go to https://weallneedourfamilies.com
To follow them on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/WeAllNeedOurFamilies
Or Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/weallneedourfamilies/

Justice for Refugees WA, a network of more the 40 community organisations, faith groups and human rights agencies, is calling on Australia’s political leaders to abandon the current harsh and unjust policies of detention, uncertainty and limbo, and to instead provide permanent protection for people seeking safety. Instead of prolonging the despair of people seeking asylum, the group calls for political leaders to provide protection, security and freedom, through a fair and just process.

Over several years the group has coordinated the Palm Sunday Walk for Justice for Refugees along with groups around the country. This year, as a precautionary approach in light of COVID-19, the group hosted a live webinar event at the Uniting Church in the City Hall, Perth, which was watched by small groups gathered in community centres and homes across the state.

Farhad Bandesh, a Kurdish asylum seeker who was recently released from a Melbourne immigration facility following eight years of detention, called into the Perth Palm Sunday event to share his experience. Mr Bandesh said, “I can’t describe how good it feels to be out of detention – freedom is beautiful. We just need everyone to be free.”

Joanna Josephs, General Manager of the Centre for Asylum Seekers, Refugees and Detainees (CARAD) was a guest speaker at the event. CARAD provides essential case management, emergency relief and volunteer support for people from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds in Perth, and they are concerned at the increasing demands on their service.

Ms Josephs explained that it was a particularly challenging time at the moment, saying, “We have been experiencing a significant increase in need among our client community.

“There continues to be drastic cuts to the Department of Home Affairs’ (DHA) Status Resolution Support Service (SRSS) program. In WA, out of the thousands of people seeking asylum living in our community, only 78 people remain eligible to receive just $36 per day from Centrelink (through the SRSS program). All of the other people seeking asylum are completely ineligible for any form of Centrelink.

“The federal government must not continue to deliberately force people seeking asylum to live in the community with no financial support while they take years to process asylum claims.”

Associate Professor Caroline Fleay, Co-Director of the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University added her voice to the call for a humane response to people seeking safety saying, “Let’s be guided by compassion in how we respond to others. Instead of limbo and uncertainty, we can offer freedom and a future where people seeking asylum and their families are safe.

“The cruelty of immigration detention, forcing people to live on temporary visas indefinitely, and refusing to reunite families, none of these are humane solutions for those who have turned to us for refuge.”

Susy Thomas, Moderator of the Uniting Church Western Australia said, “Australians have had enough of the cruel marginalisation of refugees. People want to see some real change in the way people seeking asylum are treated. Indefinite detention and temporary visas create terrible anguish that we cannot, with good conscience, continue to allow.”

Refugees and people seeking asylum currently languish in either the limbo of detention or the uncertainty of temporary protection visas. People in Papua New Guinea and Nauru are approaching their eighth year in limbo.

Approximately 30,000 refugees in Australia (the “legacy caseload”) await visa grants or live on temporary visas with their futures shrouded in uncertainty and limbo. Many families are separated with no hope for reunification due to the cruelty of current policy, and live in constant fear of deportation to danger.

For further information contact the UCWA Social Justice team at social.justice@wa.uca.org.au.

To watch the livestream of the 2021 Justice for Refugees event, click here.

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