20th
January 2020
Dear Prime Minister,
Please find enclosed an open
letter, addressed to yourself, and signed by 574 Australian citizens. Their
signatures were collected in recent times at local markets by members of our
local Rural Australians for Refugees group. The letter reads:
We, the
undersigned, are deeply concerned about the government’s continued use of
temporary protection visas for people arriving in Australia who are
subsequently found to be genuine refugees and who therefore are entitled to
protection. Under international law, temporary protection visas should only be
used in exceptional circumstances. They should not be used as a policy response
to target people who simply arrive on our shores without a valid visa. These
temporary visas, whether TPVs or SHEVs, leave refugees in a permanent state of
uncertainty and anxiety, when what they so urgently need is a sense of security
to enable them to rebuild their lives. The restrictions imposed by these
temporary visas, not least the ban on family reunion, present enormous and
unnecessary barriers to successful resettlement. The mental health impacts of
this policy are well documented.
We call
on the government to end this cruel practice and to provide permanent
protection visas for all refugees who currently hold TPVs or SHEVs.
A number
of us have refugee friends and acquaintances who have TPVs. They make a
positive contribution to Australian society and to their local communities.
Their children work hard at school and are determined to succeed in their
studies. But their lives are full of uncertainty and anxiety about what the
future may hold for them because of the temporary nature of their visas.
We do
not need to treat people in this way. Temporary protection visas serve no
useful humanitarian purpose, and they should be scrapped, as they were by a
previous Labor government. We need to allow these people to get on with their
lives in Australia, without the fear of having to go through the whole process
of revisiting their protection claims every three or five years.
Please
show some empathy and humanity by abandoning this completely unnecessary and
harmful policy.
Yours sincerely,
M....
Bellingen
and Nambucca District RAR
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