By SAHEMA SABERI
COMMUNITY VOICE
Sahema Saberi – Greater Dandenong Young Achiever 2013.
Would you risk your life for a safe haven, in the deep and dark cruel sea, led by smugglers who are only money hungry? I am sure you would to protect your children and family.
South-east Melbourne has recently had an immense increase in the number of asylum seekers, settling mainly in Dandenong and its surrounding suburbs.
As a community member, I have seen a remarkable improvement in services and support available to these people, which is excellent.
Desperate enough as they all are, the group arriving after 13 August 2012 are further isolated by a recent change in immigration policies.
By not permitting them the right to work or attend government-funded education, the government is not only acting inhumanely towards these people but unfairly to the rest of Australians by using taxpayers’ money to support them, when they are fit and willing to earn for themselves.
The reintroduction of temporary protection visas (TPVs) will not allow these asylum seekers to either travel to see their families or sponsor them in Australia.
Although the visa will allow them to work, it will be without a future certainty, as no employers would want to hire a person who they know would not be around for long. This means many of them might have to rely on government Centrelink benefits.
Amongst those arriving after the policy change, a large number is the most vulnerable group of a society, the under 18-year-olds.
The policy change does not allow a school to keep their asylum seeker students if they turn 18, even if the school wishes to.
Excitingly some schools have put their hands up to advocate for their students, so they can at least finish year 12, not exit schools when they have simply turned 18.
But how far can these schools reach to win this basic right of education, we do not know yet. As a volunteer tutor, it’s difficult to assist these students who are unable to attend school when they are capable and willing, simply because their age is now a number 18, not a 17.
I often wonder how the government consents to such treatment of young asylum seekers, when we do not treat other teenagers living in Australia like this; even those who are desperately wishing to leave education.
Thinking about our job market, with the increasing skilled and professional sectors, we are risking a large number of unemployed low-skilled hands for our own workforce, assuming these people will become part of our working communities when TPVs return in year 2014.
Turning 18 or 19-years-old in Australia, in fact any age for an asylum seeker is simply a matter of calculation of the years one has put down on their immigration papers.
In countries like Afghanistan where most of the asylum seekers come from for example, at the birth of a child, no birth certificates are issued or an official record of an individual’s existence happens.
So these young asylum seekers’ age is probably their mother’s best estimation.
A few months back, a morning tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne referred to asylum seekers as “ticking time bombs in our community”, alarming community members who have asylum seekers living in their neighbourhood.
As a resident of south-east Melbourne, I have hardly heard of an asylum seeker being involved in a serious offence, an offence that would justify this referral.
I then assumed the newspaper was trying to enlighten how these vulnerable asylum seekers need our urgent support and their families need theirs, thus using such terms may alarm the government to decide on their future faster.
