By Brendan Rees
A former child refugee is calling on Casey Council to support a motion to make it easier for community groups to sponsor refugees seeking asylum in Australia.
Amnesty Australia’s refugee campaign coordinator Shankar Kasynathan says people fleeing their homelands had few options to find safety – however community sponsorship was one option.
Mr Kasynathan was three-years-old when his family abandoned their home in war-ravaged Sri Lanka in 1987.
Fortunately his family was sponsored by a community group in Australia and avoided being transferred to “the hell that is Manus Island or Nauru”.
Mr Kasynathan, who today has degrees in economics and public policy, said his family had “wonderful memories” from church groups “who went out of their way” to provide gifts including beds, a TV, a dining table, and food at their Mount Waverley home.
“The house we were renting was a social housing property managed by the council and a church. We later bought it, and it’s still home today,” he said.
Mr Kasynathan was a guest speaker at Casey North Community Information and Support Service’s annual general meeting hosted at the Old Cheese Factory in Berwick on 16 October.
He said a fairer refugee community sponsorship program was needed as Australia’s current community sponsorship program had some flaws.
The program, he said, was “slow and expensive” and worst still, for every refugee sponsored by community, the Federal Government resettled one fewer from its own humanitarian intake.
He hoped Casey Council would get behind the 32 councils around Australia who have already passed motions to improve the current sponsorship program and expand a neighbourhood-led solution to the global refugee crisis.
“Every day communities around Australia welcome new neighbours into their neighbourhoods. Sometimes those new neighbours are refugees and the role councils play in welcoming them so that they can rebuild their lives in safety is crucial,” Mr Kasynathan said.
Community sponsorship is a model where members of the community are able to sponsor visas for refugees, who wish to begin the process of rebuilding their lives in safety in Australia.
He said Amnesty was calling on the Federal Government to step up and ensure that the intake of refugees under community sponsorship was “above and beyond” any existing humanitarian or visa quotas, and to lower the program’s prohibitive visa fees.
Mr Kasynathan said Amnesty was also campaigning for the Federal Government to “really revisit the costs associated with sponsorship”.
“It costs something like $50,000 to privately sponsor an individual and upwards of close to $100,000 for a family of five which you can imagine is totally beyond the reach of Berwick RSL or Berwick Rotary or Berwick Country Women’s Association or church group – it’s not possible, it’s not feasible,” he said.
Mr Kasynathan said the community sponsorship model had worked successfully in Canada for almost 40 years, welcoming more than 280,000 refugees through the program.
