“I have been on calls with my family in Kabul the whole night who are in a desperate situation trying to flee for their lives. It is heart-wrenching to just watch my family suffer and not be able to do anything. With all these feelings of despair, agony and abandonment, I am scared of what the future of Afghanistan will be, how many more family members will we lose in this war.
Growing up, my parents would tell us about the war, the Soviet invasion and then the Taliban in the 1990s, and about the people who lost their lives. I never thought I will be passing on such stories to my children. When my daughter grows up I will be telling her, that when she was 3 years old, one night when we slept our country was a republic, the next morning when we woke up, it was Islamic Emirate.”
Ameena, SMLS staff member
In the past, Springvale Monash Legal Service provided migration legal assistance to unaccompanied minors who came to Australia by boat. This refers to young children and teenagers who came to Australia without an adult family member to look after them. In partnership with a range of organisations, we supported them with visa applications to bring their families to Australia.
Mehdi* was one of those young people. Along with many of the others, Mehdi’s family was relying on him for income support as well as a visa pathway to Australia. Mehdi was sent on this dangerous journey, because his family could only afford to send one person to Australia, and he was the eldest child. As with many other unaccompanied minors, his father had been killed in Afghanistan.
In a devasting policy change, in 2014, the then Department of Immigration changed the rules so that refugees and people seeking asylum who came by boat are placed at the lowest processing priority, making it effectively impossible for them to sponsor their families. The now infamous ‘Direction 80’ has meant that all of our client’s visa applications- mostly to sponsor their mothers and younger siblings to safety in Australia – were rejected. This was devastating. We had to sit down with all of our young clients, most with no family or friends in Australia and say there’s nothing to be done for you. You may never see your family again in safety’. Several of these young people suffered life threatening mental health consequences.
Alongside the rest of the world, we watched in horror as the Taliban took over Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan this week. The Taliban have a history of adhering to an extremist ideology and using violent means to enforce their authority. While the newly installed Taliban claim they only want peace for the nation, there are many Afghan’s – some who are family members of our former clients- unwilling to give them a second chance and who desperately want to leave the country.
We know that for some Afghan refugees and asylum seekers in Australia, our increasingly harmful migration laws have meant that loved ones have died waiting for the chance at a family reunion visa.
Our government’s offer to allocate 3000 visa places, out of our already reduced 13,750 refugee places for Afghans wanting to leave the country is nowhere near what a country with ‘boundless plains to share’ can or should offer. The refusal to offer permanent protection to the over 4000 Afghan people currently seeking asylum in Australia is a reminder of the cruel policies faced by people fleeing war and oppression by boat. The Prime Minister said, “We will not be allowing people to enter Australia illegally, even at this time. Our policy has not changed.”
We think that it should!
Our policy must change, and SMLS is joining the call for the Australian government to:
- Release all Afghan people from detention
- Grant permanent protection visas to all Afghan people seeking asylum
- Expedite all family reunion and partner visas for Afghanistan
- Create a special intake for Afghans at risk of 20,000 places
*Please note, SMLS changes people’s names and details have been altered in case studies in order to protect client confidentiality.
