#and if the afghan refugees speak against it they have a risk of getting deported which is nuts | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

newstfionline · 3 years

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Friday, April 16, 2021

Biden Administration to Impose Tough Sanctions on Russia (NYT) The Biden administration is set to announce on Thursday a string of long-awaited measures against Russia, including far-reaching financial sanctions, for the hacking of government and private networks and a range of other activity, according to people who have been briefed on the moves. The sanctions are meant to cut deeper than previous efforts to punish Russia for interfering in elections, targeting the country’s sovereign debt, according to people briefed on the matter. Administration officials were determined to draft a response that would impose real costs on Moscow, as many previous rounds of sanctions have been shrugged off. Restrictions on sovereign debt affect a nation’s ability to raise dollar-denominated bonds, with lenders fearful of being cut off from American financial markets. The United States has used similar techniques against Iran, among others.

California governor says all schools must reopen (AP) California Gov. Gavin Newsom is urging all schools in the state to reopen, saying there are no health barriers to getting children back into classrooms and ending distance learning. His wishes remain an expectation rather than a mandate because California’s decentralized education system lets the 1,200 school districts govern themselves. Some of the largest school districts are reopening, including Los Angeles and San Diego.

Texas Nearly Went Dark Because Officials Misjudged Weather (Bloomberg) Texas came uncomfortably close to another round of rolling blackouts Tuesday night because grid operators misjudged the weather. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages most of the state’s grid, had counted on a mild cold front sweeping the state, lowering demand for power. It didn’t happen. As a result, demand on the grid was about 3,000 megawatts higher than anticipated—or the equivalent of 600,000 homes. The forecasting error, coming as 25% of power generation was off line for seasonal repairs, was another grim reminder of the vulnerability of Texas’s grid. Two months ago, a deep winter freeze knocked out almost half the state’s generating capacity, leaving millions of people in the dark for days. But Tuesday’s weather was hardly extreme, and the close call has raised questions about whether the grid operator, known as Ercot, can prevent a repeat of the February energy crisis. “It’s a disgrace for a power grid in modern times to struggle to keep the lights on during a mild day,” said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University. “We’ll be in trouble when a summer heat wave comes in and demand is one-and-a-half times as much as it was yesterday.”

‘How can a democracy function if we can’t talk to one another?’ U.S. justices ask (Reuters) Two U.S. Supreme Court justices from opposite ends of the ideological spectrum are calling on Americans to learn to talk civilly to each other or risk lasting damage to the nation’s democratic system. Speaking in a pre-recorded discussion released on Wednesday, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor and conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch both bemoaned the current state of public discourse, which they said was abetted by the spread of disinformation on social media. “We have a ... very heated debate going on. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it can turn into an awful thing, into something that destroys the fabric of our community, if we don’t learn to talk to each other,” Sotomayor said. Gorsuch, appointed by Trump, said people could learn from the court, where the justices tout their ability to remain cordial despite their differences. “How can a democracy function if we can’t talk to one another and if we can’t disagree kindly, with respect for one another’s differences and different points of view?” Gorsuch asked.

A retiring Castro to bring younger face to Cuba’s communists (AP) This week’s Communist Party congress could be the last with a Castro at the helm of Cuba’s all-powerful political institution. Six years after the death of Fidel Castro, his brother and fellow leader of the island’s 1959 revolution, Raul Castro, is being watched to see if he fulfills his commitment to give up the reins of the only political organization permitted in the country of 11 million people. At the previous Communist Party congress, in 2016, Castro announced that owing to the “inexorable laws of life,” he would step down as first secretary-general of the Communist Party in 2021 and yield power to Miguel Diaz-Canel. Also expected to resign at the gathering is Castro’s deputy, 90-year-old José Ramón Machado. That would potentially leave the 17-member Politburo for the first time without any veterans of the guerrilla insurgency, or what many Cubans affectionately refer to as the “historic generation.”

Denmark’s Closing Time: You Don’t Have To Go Home, But You Can’t Stay Here (NYT) Denmark has become the first EU country to strip 1,250 Syrians of their asylum status, forcing them to leave the country where they have built new lives and return to a still-shattered Syria. Those being told to go include high school and university students, truck drivers, factory employees, store owners, and volunteers in nongovernmental organizations. One 27-year-old woman has been living in Denmark since 2015 with her parents and four brothers. She is fluent in Danish and was studying chemistry and biotechnology at the Technical University of Denmark. Immigration authorities told her in February she must return to Damascus, while her parents and brothers are allowed to stay in Denmark. Another couple in their 50s were told they must leave, but their two sons, 20 and 22, can stay. The Danish government can’t forcibly deport the refugees, but those who don’t go voluntarily wind up in “departure centers” where they can remain indefinitely. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said Denmark’s goal is to have “zero asylum seekers.”

Violent protests shake Pakistan (Foreign Policy) A hard-line Islamist political party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), staged violent protests in major Pakistani cities this week. More than 300 people were injured, and two police officers died during the violence. Media reports and videos indicate that protesters took some police officers hostage. TLP was protesting the arrest of its leader, which Pakistani officials say was intended to “maintain law and order”—a move that clearly backfired. In February, Pakistani officials agreed to put before parliament a TLP demand to expel the French ambassador after remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron that the TLP deemed Islamophobic. The deadline for the demand to be implemented is April 20, and the TLP has vowed major demonstrations if it isn’t met. On Thursday, the French Embassy in Pakistan urged its citizens there to leave the country temporarily, citing “serious threats to French interests.” Pakistan has long treated the TLP, which aggressively defends Pakistan’s blasphemy laws and rails against religious minorities, with kid gloves. That changed on Wednesday, when the government announced it will ban the group. But Pakistan has often banned extremist groups only to have them reemerge under new names. The TLP, which has substantial support among religious conservatives, is unlikely to go away.

In India, Second Wave of Covid-19 Prompts a New Exodus (NYT) Cities in India are once again locking down to fight Covid-19—and workers are once again pouring out and heading back home to rural areas, which health experts fear could accelerate the spread of the virus and devastate poorly equipped villages, as it did last time. Thousands are fleeing hot spots in cities as India hits another record, with more than 200,000 daily new infections reported on Thursday. Bus stations are packed. Crowds are growing at railway stations. India risks repeating the traumatic mass movement that occurred last year after it enforced one of the world’s toughest national lockdowns, eliminating millions of jobs virtually overnight. That lockdown fueled the most disruptive migration across the Indian subcontinent since it was split in two between India and Pakistan in 1947. Tens of millions of lowly paid migrant workers and their families fled cities by train, bus, cargo truck, bicycle, even by blistered feet to reach home villages hundreds of miles away, where the cost of living was cheaper and they could help and be helped by loved ones. The migration also played a significant role in spreading the virus, as local officials in remote districts reported that they were swamped with the sick.

US troop pullout will leave behind an uncertain Afghanistan (AP) The Biden administration’s surprise announcement of an unconditional troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by Sept. 11 appears to strip the Taliban and the Afghan government of considerable leverage and could ramp up pressure on them to reach a peace deal. The Taliban and Afghan government can no longer hold the U.S. hostage—the Taliban with escalating violence and the Afghan president with dragging his feet on a power-sharing deal with the insurgents that doesn’t include him as president—because Washington made it clear that U.S. troops are leaving, no matter what. Still, there are growing fears that Afghanistan will collapse into worsening chaos, brutal civil war, or even a takeover by the Taliban once the Americans are gone—opening a new chapter in the constant war that has lasted for decades.

Beijing skies turn yellow as sand, dust engulf Chinese capital (Reuters) The skies above Beijing turned yellow and air pollution soared to severe levels as a giant cloud of sand and dust particles rolled into the city, propelled by strong winds from the north of China. The amount of sand in the air was less than that during two sandstorms in northern China last month, but the windspeed was higher, allowing the dusty weather to travel faster and farther, according to the meteorological administration. China typically blames Mongolia’s Gobi desert for its annual sandstorms. Beijing has been planting millions of trees along its border to block out sandstorms, part of a project known as the “Great Green Wall”.

Myanmar on the way to becoming a failed state? (The Economist) Myanmar could become Asia’s next failed state. Daily protests continue and soldiers are rampaging through rebellious districts, beating and killing at random; the overall death toll has passed 700. Citizens have burned down shops tied to the army and a general strike has paralysed businesses and public services. In the borderlands some of the 20 or so armed groups that have battled the government on-and-off for decades are taking advantage of the crisis to seize military outposts or caches of weapons. A vacuum is being created in a territory bigger than France that abuts Asia’s biggest powers, China and India. It will be filled by violence and suffering. Although Myanmar is not yet as lawless as Afghanistan, it is rapidly heading in that direction. The ruin of Myanmar is not only a calamity for the 54m Burmese; it also threatens to spread chaos as drugs, disease and refugees spill over Myanmar’s borders.

Drug-resistant bacteria (Financial Times) The World Health Organization has warned none of the antibiotics currently being developed against antimicrobial resistance are enough to tackle drug-resistant bacteria that are expected to kill millions by 2050. In a report published on Thursday, the WHO said that none of the 43 such drugs in the pipeline addressed the 13 most dangerous superbugs it had identified. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been described by experts as a silent pandemic. Research suggests the spread of bugs that tolerate drugs kills about 700,000 people a year, a figure that could rise to 10m by 2050—the same number of lives claimed by cancer each year.

#headlines #news

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rightsinexile · 5 years

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Do refugees have to stay in the first safe country they reach?

This short piece was contributed by Joël Reland, Factchecker at Full Fact, the UK’s independent factchecking charity. He states that he had help writing this article from Dr Violeta Moreno-Lax, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Law and Founder of the Immigration Law Programme at Queen Mary University of London.

“[The people trying to cross the Channel from France to the UK] are not refugees…

“Because no one needs refuge from France. Or any of the other numerous safe countries they’ve passed though [sic] en route…

“And who under the Geneva Convention should seek refuge in the first safe country they come to. If they were genuine, that’s what they’d do. They’re not genuine. Just illegal migrants on the take.

Suzanne Evans, 3 January 2019

The above comments, made by former UKIP politician and Brexit campaigner Suzanne Evans, relate to the recent cases of people trying to cross the Channel from France to England in small boats.

Ms Evans cannot know whether the people trying to cross the channel in recent months would be recognised as refugees. This is to be determined by immigration officials in whichever country reviews their asylum applications.

She is also incorrect to say that refugees should seek refuge in the first safe country they come to. Under the UN Refugee Convention, there is no obligation on refugees to do this — an interpretation which is upheld in UK case law. Those trying to cross the Channel can legitimately claim asylum in the UK if they reach it.

That said, refugees who arrive in the UK after passing through another EU country can, under certain circumstances, be returned to the first EU country they entered, under an EU law known as the Dublin Regulation.

What is a refugee? And what is an asylum seeker?

The 1951 UN Refugee Convention (also known as the Geneva Convention) defines what a refugee is, what rights a refugee has, and the responsibilities of states towards refugees.

It defines a refugee as someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” has fled their own country or (if they have no nationality) country of usual residence, and is unable or unwilling to return to it or seek protection from it.

Being recognised as a refugee gives you the right to not to be returned to the country you have fled, as well as a minimum standard of rights and freedoms in a safe country.

An asylum seeker is someone who is in need and search of refuge. The right to seek asylum from persecution in other countries is a universal human right, set out in Article 14 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

Practically speaking, an asylum seeker is someone who has applied for refugee status (or another form of international protection) in another country, and is awaiting a decision on that application. They can only apply once they physically reach the country.

In the UK, once an asylum seeker has had their application processed, they may receive permission to stay as a refugee for five years (after which they can apply to settle in the UK). They may also be given “permission to stay for humanitarian reasons” or other reasons, or their application may be rejected in which case, if no appeal is successful, they have to leave the UK unless they face a “real risk” of serious harm in the case of deportation.

There is no obligation on refugees to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach

Ms Evans is wrong to claim that, under the Geneva Convention, refugees should seek refuge in the first safe country they come to.

It contains no obligation “either explicit or implicit” for refugees to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach, according to immigration lawyer Colin Yeo.

This means that an asylum seeker can arrive in France (or any other country) before travelling to the UK and still legitimately claim to be a refugee. It is then down to the UK to review that application.

It doesn’t matter that these individuals are illegally crossing the channel

Ms Evans describes those seeking to cross the Channel to the UK in small boats as “illegal migrants”.

Although it’s certainly true that crossing the Channel without authorisation isn’t a legal way to enter the UK, Article 31 of the UN Refugee Convention states that refugees cannot be penalised for entering the country illegally to claim asylum if they are “coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened” provided they “present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence”.

A lot depends here on how to interpret which country people are “coming directly from”. It could be argued, for instance, that as the people crossing the channel are coming directly from France—which is not the country they initially fled—they don’t have the right to claim asylum in the UK.

However, in 1999 a UK judge ruled that “some element of choice is indeed open to refugees as to where they may properly claim asylum.” The judge specified that “any merely short term stopover en route” to another country should not forfeit the individual’s right to claim refugee status elsewhere.

This means people can legitimately make a claim for asylum in the UK after passing through other “safe” countries.

It also cannot be stated with certainty that these individuals crossing the Channel were safe in France, unless we know more about their backgrounds. The European Court of Human Rights has previously found an EU country (Greece) to pose a risk to an Afghan refugee, therefore upholding the refugee’s right to seek asylum elsewhere (Belgium). There is also previous evidence of asylum seekers and migrants in France not being treated as they should be according to French law.

That said, the UK can sometimes return refugees to elsewhere in the EU

The UK could, under certain circumstances, send the people crossing the Channel on dinghies back to France or another EU country upon arrival. This is because of an EU law known as the Dublin Regulation.

Under the terms of the Dublin Regulation, a refugee should normally have their asylum claim examined in the first EU country they enter. If the claim is accepted, they get refugee status in that country.

In practice, this means that upon arrival in the UK asylum seekers will have their fingerprints checked against an EU database known as Eurodac. The database allows immigration officials to see if an asylum seeker has launched an application in any other EU countries, or come into contact with the authorities there, and determine which country should process their claim.

There are some cases in which this rule doesn’t apply. For example, if an applicant for asylum has a family member who has already successfully claimed asylum in another EU country, then that country is where their claim should be reviewed. There are a number of further exceptions, including if the applicant is a minor, if several family members claim asylum around the same time, or of the applicant is dependent on the assistance of a parent or family member legally resident in the EU.

#refugees #refugee #asylum #EU #crossing chanel #joël Reland #Dr Violeta Moreno-Lax

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samanthasroberts · 7 years

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‘We are the forgotten people’: the anguish of Australia’s ‘invisible’ asylum seekers

Nearly 29,000 asylum seekers are in Australia on temporary bridging visas. These people may be free from detention but with many denied education, healthcare and the right to work they remain locked in desperate poverty and with no idea what their futures hold. A Guardian Australia investigation

Life and death on a bridging visa

July nights were freezing. The barbecue, though, was warm, a bulwark against the cold of the descending dark.

Balan, a Tamil asylum seeker, had turned his mind already to the night ahead. He knew he could not afford to run a heater. He and his housemates needed to watch every dollar and winter was the hardest time. The last electricity bill had run to hundreds of dollars they didnt have.

Quietly, as the shared meal came to an end, Balan gathered up the coals from the barbecue in a tin and carried them to his room. There he slept on the floor, next to the coals as they burned down. To keep the heat in, he closed the door behind him.

As he slept, the room filled with carbon monoxide.

In the morning, Balans brother, worried by his failure to appear for breakfast, pushed open the door. Balan had obviously realised at some point in the night that he needed to get out. He had made it halfway to the door before he collapsed.

The coals were still warm. But Balan was dead, killed by carbon monoxide poisoning.

The privation that contributed to Balans death didnt occur in the straitened circumstance of a refugee camp, or on the borderlands of a war-torn region.

It happened in Sydney, to a man living legally in Australia on a bridging visa.

Afghan asylum seeker Farid in a park next to his house in western Sydney. He says he dreams of one day being allowed to visit his family, who live in Iran as refugees. Photograph: Abdul Karim Hekmat

Today nearly 29,000 people live in Australia on a temporary permit to reside in the country known as a bridging visa E (BVE). Yet they are the invisible. They live in the shadows, on the fringes of Australian society.

Bridging visa E is for people who have at some stage been judged to have been unlawfully in Australia. Typically they are granted to asylum seekers who have arrived by boat and have made claims for refugee protection. Balan was one of these, having fled the continuing and brutal persecution of the Tamil minority in post-civil war Sri Lanka.

BVEs can be valid for 28 days or up to three years. Hundreds of people have lived on rolling visas, one temporary solution after another, for more than five years.

Many cannot access healthcare somewhere around a third have no right to Australias publicly funded Medicare despite the fact that they may carry physical and mental scars from their homelands, their journeys and their initial incarceration under Australias policy of mandatory detention.

Sorry, your browser is unable to play this video.

We have been forced into isolation: life on a bridging visa

Many cannot legally work. The immigration department declined to answer the Guardians questions about how many bridging visa holders have the right to seek employment. But information from community organisations who work with asylum seekers found only about two-thirds of bridging visa holders have work rights despite a parliamentary deal more than a year ago that they all be granted the right to earn a living.

Those without work rights are reliant on limited government welfare, the benevolence of friends and charity, or risking their liberty taking cash-in-hand jobs in the underground economy.

A black market job offers some financial respite but leaves bridging visa holders vulnerable to exploitation by employers who may underpay them or refuse to pay them at all and threaten to ring immigration if they complain.

Delays caused by immigration department cutbacks, massive staff turnover rates and more-than-occasional bouts of bureaucratic incompetence mean asylum seekers often spend months waiting for new bridging visas to be granted months spent living in the shadowlands of no income, no support and no healthcare: no legal right to be in the country.

Parliament heard in February that at least 1,400 people are in this position in Australia right now.

Several BVE holders report having to quit jobs because the looming expiration of their visas means they can no longer work legally.

Indeed they say they face exploitation at every step: from real estate agents who charge exorbitant penalties for late rents to salesmen who charge usurious rates of credit on white goods.

And their progression to substantive visas has been hampered by government cuts to legal services. In 2014 the government removed access for BVE holders to immigration advice. Asylum seekers have been left to navigate the byzantine process of applying for substantive visas on their own, negotiating complex forms in English for many their third or fourth language.

As a final imposition, bridging visa holders are required to live under a punitive code of behaviour that not only proscribes criminal activity already outlawed by statute but prohibits them from engaging in undefined disruptive activities that are inconsiderate [or] disrespectful.

The prohibitions exist over and above the laws of the land but they require no charge to be laid, no evidence, no proof.

One bridging visa holder has been incarcerated for more than two years for drinking a beer on a train.

For all of the heat and light over Australias immigration policies, BVE holders are the forgotten. Freed from the bonds of detention, they are, supposedly, the fortunate. Often their lives only puncture the public consciousness when they end.

In the early hours of the morning of 27 October 2015, an Iranian asylum seeker, Reza Alizadeh, hanged himself in a public stairwell at Brisbane airport. He had lived on a succession of bridging visas since 2013.

In the same month an Afghan, Khodayar Amini, set himself on fire while on a video call with two refugee advocates. He said he feared being detained again.

In June, Raza, another Afghan, jumped in front of a Perth train. He was living on a bridging visa and had been interviewed by police a day earlier.

In October 2014, a 29-year-old Tamil, Leo Seemanpillai, set himself on fire outside his house. He suffered burns to 90% of his body and died in hospital.

And in February of that year, Rezene Mebrahta Engeda drowned himself in the Maribyrnong river, reportedly out of concern he was about to be deported back to Eritrea.

But those violent tragedies are the visible exceptions to the invisible rule. Tens of thousands of others on bridging visas are trapped in a dispiriting cycle of hardscrabble survival.

During a six-month investigation, the Guardian met dozens of people living in Australia on bridging visas. Over shared meals, while travelling, as they worked or relaxed, the men and women spoke almost uniformly of the endless uncertainty of their existences, the grinding poverty of their circumstances, their separation from family and community, and their difficulties finding work or education to restart interrupted lives.

Dawood, an Afghan asylum seeker on a BVE, cannot travel to see his family, or be reunited with them in Australia. He has not seen his daughter since she was three months old. She asked him if he would be home for her fifth birthday:

My wife is crying over the phone and asking me, When you come, when you come? I say, come next month, come next season, or come next year but four and a half years passes like that. You know, you cant lie to your child, she is little. I want to be besides her, to celebrate her birthday like every other father. What I am going to do? They keep us in this situation. I will miss many more birthdays.

Ali Sadaat, an Iranian teenager who was on a BVE, has been detained for two years and is now being held indefinitely on Christmas Island for drinking a beer on a train:

I dont want to be without freedom. Pray for me. This is real. I cant see light at the end of the tunnel.

Shams was barred from school in Australia after one week because he had turned 18. No longer a minor BVE holder, he was no longer eligible to attend secondary school:

I was very disappointed. I went home and cried for many days. I had no work rights, no study rights. I sat all day at home either thinking or crying. Nothing to do.

Haleema, an Afghan Hazara, says she cant afford to feed or clothe her children properly:

I cant buy fruit. I just buy second-hand fruit, the rotten ones [that] no one buy. If I buy rice, I cant buy bread. Most of the time I give potato to my children. I cant buy anything else. I cant buy shoes and uniforms for my children going to school.

A Tamil asylum seeker, speaking on condition on anonymity, fears being re-detained or deported:

We are scared to go and meet the government. We are scared they will take us and deport us. We know that has happened to people we know. People go for a meeting with the department and they just never come back.

These are the voices of those rarely heard, the stories of those holding together an existence amid the shifting sands of a capricious regime: a unsparing present before an uncertain future.

Many in their situation are afraid to speak out. Doing so, they fear, will damage their claim to refugee status or lead to them being taken into detention. Others speak only on condition of anonymity, fearful that talking publicly will be viewed as a breach of the code of behaviour they regard as an oppression.

Every bridging visa holder knows of someone who went for a routine interview with the department and never came home, taken in for detention not only indefinite and capricious but unchallengeable.

We are the forgotten people, one BVE holder says on a late-night outer-suburban train. Everywhere here is heaven, he says, gesturing out the window to the warmly lit houses outside. But we live in hell and no one sees, so no one cares.

Asylum seeker Zaman chooses a quiet corner in his crowded share house to speak to his wife and daughter in Afghanistan. Photograph: Abdul Karim Hekmat

Lives in limbo

After Balans death, his friends tell the Guardian the tragedy was a reminder to them all of the fragility of their existence in Australia.

The fear of death came too close, one says. Things like that could happen to us here and we have no family. No one to watch out for us. If something happens, no one can help us.

But they understand, too, how his death happened: his desire to save money, to stretch every dollar, is one they understand acutely.

There is never enough, one man says quietly. He relies on the generosity of charities and friends in often only marginally better situations than his. I feel ashamed because I want to support myself but I cant.

Bridging visa holders say they are vulnerable to exploitation. A three-bedroom apartment the Guardian visits has six BVE holders living in it. Paint peels from the walls and the security screens lean dispiritingly from the windows but its residents are happy to have this place. Houses, they say, are hard to find. With no references or rent history, applications from bridging visa holders go to the bottom of the pile, even if they have the backing of a community organisation or a charity.

The men who live here feel their hold on their home is precarious. They say if they are a single day late with their rent they are charged penalties that have run into the hundreds of dollars or risk eviction yet they see themselves as fortunate.

Hundreds of bridging visa holders sleep rough or couchsurf, prevailing as long as they can on friends and other BVE holders momentarily more fortunate. It happens at this flat. There are only three people supposed to be here but many many more stay, one asylum seeker says. All the time, extra people.

At another household, asylum seekers say they were sold white goods on credit with huge interest repayments they didnt properly understand. The repayments continue still, even though the washing machine they bought has long since stopped working. They dont have the money to fix it.

The Rev Dr John Jegasothy, a former Tamil refugee and now an Australian citizen, says life on a bridging visa is enforced penury and a poverty made worse because of its interminable nature. People spend years eking out an existence, Jegasothy says, wasting the best working and studying years of their lives, not knowing whether theyll suddenly be deported, finally granted a visa, or simply held longer still in the fraught limbo of the bridging visa loop.

They are treated as second-class people,Jegasothy says. They dont know what will happen to them and they suffer in silence, because they are invisible to the rest of Australia.

For those with children, the privations of the bridging visa regime are compounded.

Haleema, an Afghan Hazara, fled to Australia with her family in 2012 after years as a refugee in Iran where she faced constant threat of arrest, persecution and deportation, and where her two sons could not go to school.

She said her only thoughts of Australia were of finding a safe home for her sons. We thought if we go somewhere else we can be safe but our life is the same as before when we were in Iran: we live in constant fear.

I cant sleep at night. I dont know what happen in the future, if we will be sent back or stay here.

Haleema told the Guardian her children suffered because of the financial strictures of life on a bridging visa. Most of my money go to rent. I have only $100 left [each week] and its not enough, she says.

I sometimes cant buy milk and bread for the house. I cant buy fruit. I just buy second-hand fruit, the rotten ones [that] no one buy. If I buy rice, I cant buy bread.

Most of the time I give potato to my children. I cant buy anything else. I cant buy shoes and uniforms for my children going to school.

On the Newtown doorstep of Sydneys Asylum Seeker Centre, about 35 new people arrive every week, seeking all manner of assistance: from the immediate urgent medical attention, a roof over their heads and a bed for the night, food or clothing to the progressive help with the labyrinthine visa application process, legal advice, aid finding work or a home to lease.

Sixty per cent of those who present at the centre are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. Some may have spent a night outdoors, in a hostel, or a whole family may have been living in one room, says the centres chief executive, Frances Rush. But when their money runs out they have no alternative but to seek help and so they come to charities such as the centre.

Our immediate priority is to make sure they have somewhere to sleep that night, food to eat and provide them with urgent medical care if needed. Once we have them in a stable situation, we can then assess what their longer term needs are.

The first days on a bridging visa are often the most difficult, Rush says. About 60% of those assisted by the centre are not boat arrivals but came by plane to Australia.

Many have suffered horrendous experiences which forced them to flee for their safety. They have had to leave their whole identity behind: their culture, family, friends and work or career. On top of this they have had to endure the physical journey which in itself can be very traumatic and dangerous.

So while they may feel safe when they arrive, applying for protection and getting back on their feet in a strange land is also a long and complicated process.

The Guardian put a series of questions to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and its minister asking about the number of BVE holders, their circumstances and the conditions applied to them. Both refused to answer in detail. The ministers office provided a statement:

Labors border failures allowed more than 50,000 illegal maritime arrivals to flood into Australia over six years, which placed unprecedented pressure on the system. Labors no advantage policy introduced in 2012 effectively froze illegal maritime arrival processing. Labors mess the legacy caseload of 30,000 unprocessed illegal arrivals was left to the Coalition government to deal with.

More than 23,000 bridging visas were granted in 2015, most with no restrictions on work. BVE holders generally have access to Medicare. Labor further compounded processing of the illegal maritime arrival caseload by opposing legislation for temporary protection visas (TPVs) and safe haven enterprise visas (Shevs) until the end of 2014. Processing could only begin mid last year several thousand applications for TPVs and SHEVs are now being processed.

Dutton has said the legacy caseload could take a decade to process.

Other organisations are concerned less with which party is in power but with the manifestation of the bridging visa regime itself.

The UN high commissioner for refugees found, in a report three years ago, that those on bridging visas without work rights in Australia are unable to meet their basic needs and are living in a state of destitution.

Bridging visa holders had poor housing and went without essential items such as beds or refrigerators: An income below the poverty line has led to an overwhelming reliance on community organisations for food, clothing and furniture. Being reliant on income support and not being permitted to work is, for many, felt as shameful and demoralising.

The lives of asylum seekers in the community are largely characterised by uncertainty about their futures and the processing of their claims, and the impact of constant policy changes.

This year Gillian Triggs, the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, said the holding of people for years on a succession of bridging visas was a very significant breach of basic human rights.

Really, [it is] a failure to respect their right to claim the status of a refugee, she said. Its easy to demean people who dont yet have that status and we hold them for many many years without having determined their position.

Unable to sleep, Farid calls his family overseas. He is comforted by hearing his elderly mothers voice but feels sad when she asks: When will you come home to see me? Photograph: Abdul Karim Hekmat

Strangers to their families

In a weather-beaten house in a quiet suburb of western Sydney, five men sit in silence. Dark brown curtains veil the three large windows, and a television, coated in thick dust, is switched off in a corner. No one speaks. One man, his face lit by the glow of his phone, stares at the screen in front of him. The others sit in silence, one holding his head in his hands.

From the kitchen, the quiet clank of cooking can be heard. It is the turn of Farid, a lean man of quick, precise movements, to prepare their meal. Into the silence of the main room he walks, carrying a pot and the smell of lamb and spices fills the air.

Ready, he says, placing the pot on a mat in the middle of the floor, following this with an immediate apology. He says he meant to cook curry: it turned into shurba, an Afghan soup, because his mind was elsewhere and he poured in too much water.

This is what happens, when your family is not here, your mind is everywhere. The others burst into the laughter of immediate forgiveness. Their silence broken, they creep forward to sit cross-legged before the food. They begin to eat and, finally, to speak.

Farid has eyes that stare from deep within their sockets. He speaks reluctantly and uncertainly. He has been displaced from his homeland for more years than he can easily remember.

An Afghan, he lived for years as a refugee in Iran, where he was harassed and beaten by authorities because of his illegal status. He was regularly arrested and deported back to Afghanistan at that time under the control of the Taliban before he would be forced to flee again. Finally he sought somewhere more permanent: sanctuary in Australia.

But life in Australia has not brought stability. After years on a bridging visa he is still waiting to know whether he will be accepted as a refugee. His mother is elderly and she has fallen ill, but he says he cannot visit her: she is in a country he is not a citizen of nor permitted to enter. And a bridging visa does not allow a person to leave Australia and return.

Four Hazara asylum seekers sit down to a meal of qabuli palaw with fresh Afghan bread. Photograph: Abdul Karim Hekmat

My mother is crying over the phone, Please come to see me. I want to see my son one last time.

Reza is an ethnic Hazara who fled central Afghanistan for Australia in 2012. He arrived by boat in September, just after the 13 August cut-off that re-established offshore processing. He was sent to Nauru, where he spent 15 months in detention, before landing in Sydney on a bridging visa over two years ago.

The 31-year-old fled Afghanistan after surviving a bomb blast in Kabul. He lifts his trouser leg to reveal a long, jagged scar on his left ankle. His only child, a son, was two when he left. The boy is now six. Reza says he never imagined he would not see him for four years.

He pulls a phone from his shirt pocket and flicks through the images of the boy on its screen, his face briefly lighting up at seeing his sons smiling face.

I miss him so much. I want to hug him but how hard this is. Reza wipes a tear from his eye and puts the phone away.

Everything in life has a phase, he says, gazing at the floor. Ive missed a big part of my sons childhood. I miss his smile. I miss his playfulness. I missed how much he grew in four years.

The joy of raising a child is when they are little; you play with him. When he grows up he will find his own way in the world.

Those living in Australia on bridging visas say they feel trapped in a cycle of temporary solutions, with no prospect of seeing family members again or being able to sponsor their relatives to Australia.

Zaman has not seen his wife and son for four years. He worries his son will not recognise him if he ever sees him again. And he doesnt know what relationship they could have after so long apart. For how long, we wait? For how long, be uncertain?

There is nothing more comfort than having your family besides you, he says. If we were not desperate, I would not come this way [by boat]. Its very dangerous and it required a lot of courage.

Compounding the concerns of many about their separation is fear for the safety of their families. Many of the Hazara in Australia have family still living in volatile parts of Afghanistan, where the Taliban are dangerously resurgent. Last year was the deadliest year for the Hazara minority in Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.

Asylum seekers from that country monitor local media obsessively and say they are alarmed by regular reports of Hazara being dragged from buses at roadblocks and put to death at the side of the road. In November seven Hazaras were killed on a roadside in southern Afghanistan, including a seven-year-old girl whose throat was slit by wire.

I also have a seven-year-old daughter, Rauf tells the Guardian. He comes from Damurda in Ghazni, the same village as those slain. I wonder, If they cant spare a child, how could they spare anyone?

The situation is similarly chaotic along Pakistans north-western frontier. Thousands of Hazara, exiled from Afghanistan, live in two fortified suburbs in Quetta, where the ethnic minority is regularly targeted by bomb attacks.

An Iranian asylum seeker living in Melbourne with her child, who was born in Australia. The mother has been suffering trauma as a result of her boat journey to Australia and her uncertain situation on a bridging visa. A psychologist has diagnosed her as having post-traumatic stress disorder. Photograph: Abdul Karim Hekmat

One Hazara asylum seeker in Sydney, who declines to give his name, says he is so worried about his children going to school in Quetta that he calls twice a day; once in the morning before they leave for class and again every evening to know they have returned safely.

Dawood worked as an interpreter for a foreign non-governmental organisation in Afghanistan. His involvement with the west attracted the attention of the Taliban and they threatened to kill him. He arrived in Australia in June 2012 two months before the 13 August cut-off.

He was in Wickham Point detention centre near Darwin when the new no advantage rule came in. He says he remembers an immigration department representative that day announcing to about 400 asylum seekers: The new law does not apply to you. No matter what happens to the government, you will be given a permanent visa.

Four years after he arrived in Australia, and two and a half years since his interview to determine his refugee status, Dawood has had no news on his visa. Usually it takes about six months or a year to get an answer, they accept you or not. I have been waiting two and a half years, for no answer.

I believe a great injustice was done to me. They lied to us.

Dawoods daughter was three months old when he left Kabul. He speaks to her on the phone almost every day. She has been asking if he will come home next month for her fifth birthday.

I lied to her, I said I will come, he says, rubbing his unshaven chin. Thats what happens now, I am lying to my family all these years. My wife is crying over the phone and asking me, When you come, when you come? I say, come next month, come next season or come next year but four and a half years passed like that.

You know, you cant lie to your child, she is little. I want to be besides her, to celebrate her birthday like every other father, he says, choking back tears. What I am going to do? They keep us in this situation.

When Dawood arrived, asylum seekers whose claims for refugee status were upheld were granted permanent protection visas, entitling holders to be reunited with their families.

But after his case had been stagnant for two and a half years a legislative change pushed through parliament with the support of the crossbench in December 2014 reinstated temporary protection visas and created safe haven enterprise visas.

If Dawoods claim for protection is ultimately accepted that is, if Australia agrees he has a well-founded fear of persecution in his homeland and cannot be returned there he will have a visa for another three or five years but with no right to be reunited with his family. He does not know when he will see his wife and daughter again. He does not know if he ever will.

I will miss many more birthdays.

Two years detention for drinking a beer

Nothing moves outside the Yongah Hill detention centre. Only the heat shimmering across the scrubby land breaks the stillness. Even inside the centre, secreted in bushland 90km north-east of Perth, people seemed compelled to a timid inaction.

In the visitors room, conversations are conducted in hushed tones, barely above a whisper. Friends, partners and advocates sit with detainees, leaning their heads close to listen. Through a double-glazed window in an adjacent room, a sullen security guard in khaki watches over all.

On the wall hangs a picture: a crude drawing of a heart, with two arrows through it. The caption is strangely incongruous: My heart is opening wider. Love people being around me.

On the wall opposite, a poster bears the logo of Australian Human Rights Commission. In several languages, including English, it reads: People should be treated fairly in immigration detention centres.

Ali, a 19-year-old Hazara asylum seeker, prays in his home in western Sydney. He finished high school last year but cant afford to the fees to study as an international student at university or Tafe. Before coming to Australia, he lived as a refugee in Iran where he had no right to education. Photograph: Abdul Karim Hekmat

Sarwar is one of those in this immigration detention centre. He says he has not been treated fairly.

The 37-year-old Sri Lankan Muslim arrived in Australia by boat in 2012, fleeing the sectarian violence that continues to benight the country. After a brief period in detention, Sarwar was released into the community in 2013 on a bridging visa.

But now, back in detention, he holds in his hands his file the frayed, fat paper trail that everybody caught within Australias immigration system accumulates.

Sarwar is anxious to show one piece of paper in particular: a report from a doctor that reads: This man is in significant distress due to his visa not being approved for two years.

The next paper he proffers demonstrates why he is here, in Yongah Hill detention centre, with no prospect of release. His file says he is being detained for public threat to suicide; security issue and suicidal threats; working illegally as a farmer. According to an incident report: He called immigration to threaten to kill himself.

No charges have been laid against Sarwar, nor will there be. According to his file there is no investigation ongoing into his actions. Still he remains in detention. He denies any wrongdoing. I am a Muslim, I never do the wrong thing. Do not like illegal money.

He says he only told the immigration department when he called: For two days, I drink only water. I am starving, better kill myself.

I have no money, no work rights, he says.

Sarwar tells the Guardian he has two daughters and a son in Sri Lanka. No money, they starve, they no go to school.

Through tears, he says he has been detained for eight months already, while i

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/17/we-are-the-forgotten-people-the-anguish-of-australias-invisible-asylum-seekers/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/we-are-the-forgotten-people-the-anguish-of-australias-invisible-asylum-seekers/

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