A generally agreed principle of our shared humanity is the need to protect the safety, dignity and wellbeing of refugees and people seeking asylum. This should be at the centre of any human response to a call for help and is fundamental to a country that welcomes and gives people a fair go.
It was a community like Biloela that helped my Tamil family build a home in Australia, and it is a testimony to Biloela’s perseverance that the Murugappan family finally gets to go home to that loving community.
Every day, local communities across Australia play a vital role in extending a meaningful welcome to refugees and people seeking asylum. They celebrate their contributions to their new homes, communities and neighbours. We do this not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s a core part of building and sustaining the collective life we all enjoy. We need our new neighbours just as much as they might need us.
Over days, months and years, we have seen the community of Biloela wrap around its new neighbours, the Murugappan family, to create real change in their lives and ultimately the rest of the country. We have also witnessed the resilience of the family, and the community supporting them, tested time and time again by uncertainty about their future.
With the Murugappan family going home to Biloela, there is a question that lingers in the hearts of other communities. What happens next for those other families we care for? Other people we know and love? For those of us who have developed friendships with refugees on temporary visas and people seeking asylum, we want to know that we can find fairness for those still facing uncertainty who work in our schools, hospitals and factories.
In migrant communities, we see families and partners caring for loved ones and unsure if they can stay, or fearing for those stuck in conflict overseas. What pathways are available for them now? In what ways does this goodwill extend to them? On what road to refuge will they travel?
In my frequent exchanges with Tamils, and others seeking refuge here in Australia, I have appreciated first-hand the impact of prolonged uncertainty, which is highly corrosive to a person’s resilience, particularly when coupled with pre-existing traumas, experiences on migration journeys and periods of immigration detention. Some of these people are fortunate enough to have whole communities supporting them, and those communities too sit alongside their new neighbours – collectively hoping for certainty.
This connection to community improves peoples’ wellbeing but it would be better if they didn’t have to experience the anxiety of prolonged uncertainty.
From the very beginning, the community of Biloela – colleagues, neighbours, school mates and teachers – wanted this family back as members of their community. We have seen an outpouring of support, and there’s a desire across the country to open these roads to refuge.
We can and must start by supporting more communities across the country to extend a meaningful and heartfelt welcome for refugees and people seeking asylum. This means offering safety to more people by increasing the annual humanitarian intake of refugees.
Why would we not continue to harness the good will of communities like Biloela, and expand community-led pathways which draw on community, employment and education sponsorship, and that adds to the humanitarian intake?
This family’s story should inspire us to look into our moral imagination to provide certainty for refugees by providing effective pathways to permanent visas.
For the Murugappan family the wait has been long – and for so many others, the uncertainty continues.
• Shankar Kasynathan is a former Tamil refugee and the national advocacy adviser to the Australian Red Cross
