A number of Bega Valley residents believe the community is ready to accept and support refugees.
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An information session on welcoming refugees and asylum seekers into communities was held on Saturday, April 2 at Tarraganda.
The majority, if not all, of those in attendance appeared to agree with bringing refugees into the local community, with the first step towards this goal creating a website that would fulfill two functions.
The first, to collect information for the Valley’s residents on ways to advocate for refugees to settle the area as well as providing a forum for organising events, and to show refugees looking for places to settle in regional NSW that Bega was an organised and desirable location.
“A lot of communities say they are interested [in welcoming refugees] but they are not ready,” Queanbeyan Multicultural/Multilingual Centre’s John Gunn said at the session.
“But I don’t think that is the case here, which is one of the reasons why I was so excited to come down today.”
He said of the 12,000 Syrian refugees Australia has stated it will accept, 250 will be processed in the ACT.
These refugees would have the choice to move into South East NSW, but this would depend on them being aware of another area or town to move to which is why a website would be useful.
During the information session, Mr Gunn, laywer and registered migration agent Rebecca Wallace and the Red Cross’s manager of migration support programs Malou Pascual-Anes discussed issues around refugees and asylum seekers in Australia.
To clarify, in Australia a refugee is a person who has fled persecution, sought protection in another country and been granted refugee status, while an asylum seeker has applied for refugee status, but their status remains unresolved.
If an asylum seeker arrives by boat they will not have a visa and so will not have access to permanent residency in Australia, while a person who arrives by air with a visa will be processed onshore.
As they are not eligible for permanent protection, an asylum seeker who arrives by boat can apply for Temporary Protection Visas (TPV) for three years or Safe Haven Enterprise Visas (SHEV) for five years.
Ms Wallace said TPVs were introduced by former Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Scott Morrison, who wanted something that meant asylum seekers would have no access to permanent residency.
The current regime of TPVs meant the asylum seekers’ situation in Australia was probably the worst it has ever been, she said, and the only pathway to another long-term visa was was via the SHEVs.
However, Ms Wallace said many people on a SHEV will be unable to meet the criteria for one of those long-term visas, so their only viable option was through finding jobs and applying for skilled/employer visas.
