Steps toward permanency for asylum seekers

A COMMUNITY-LED walk in Queenscliff has called for urgent action to grant permanent visas to the thousands of asylum seekers who have spent more than a decade in limbo, as part of a national demonstration.

About 100 people joined the Queenscliff leg of the second annual Big Walk 4 Refugees last Saturday, walking 4.5km together along the Bellarine Highway and through the Queenscliff Narrows coastal paths.

The walk, led by Queenscliff Rural Australians for Refugees, brought together a broad cross-section of the community, with refugee advocates, reconciliation groups, trade unionists and people both young and old, walking alongside asylum seekers and refugees from countries including Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

Tamil refugee Nithi Kanakarathinam, who fled persecution in Sri Lanka in 2012 and has experienced the impacts of visa limbo first-hand, spoke ahead of the walk, sharing insights into the ongoing trauma still faced by thousands of people who arrived in Australia by boat before January 2014 and are yet to be granted permanency.

“It took four years after we arrived in Geelong for the Coalition government to allow us to apply for asylum. We were judged under a very unfair process called ‘fast track’, where many were refused and had limited right of appeal,” Nithi said.

This fast-paced visa application process, adopted in 2014 by the then-Abbott Coalition government, has since faced criticism and been dismantled, but unlike Nithi, who was granted permanency in 2023, up to 8,000 asylum seekers across the country are still waiting for their refugee status to be resolved.

“They are here in a safe place, but they don’t have freedom and they still have fear,” Nithi said.

He said the endless waiting and uncertainty, the inability to plan for the future or to reunite with their families was “torturing” these individuals and “destroying their mental health”.

“They are living with huge mental stress, with no right to reunite with their wives and children. Some have no work rights, some have no access to Medicare, some are on bridging visas that have to be renewed every three months.

“Children who have completed their schooling here cannot access university unless they pay international student fees. Some kids were born here – this is the only home they know.

“They always live with uncertainty and fear.”