{"id":3420,"date":"2014-11-29T17:15:14","date_gmt":"2014-11-29T06:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/?p=3420"},"modified":"2014-11-29T17:16:12","modified_gmt":"2014-11-29T06:16:12","slug":"northern-beaches-refugee-sanctuary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/?p=3420","title":{"rendered":"Northern Beaches Refugee Sanctuary Newsletter – Summer 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t
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A Project of the MANLY FRESHWATER CATHOLIC CHURCH
\nMary Immaculate and St Athanasius Church Patrons: Bishop David Walker,\u00a0Tom Keneally,\u00a0Des Hasler
\n6 Raglan St, Manly, NSW, 2095
\nWebsite: www.nbrs.org.au<\/a>
\nEmail address: nbrs@optusnet.com.au
\nWelcome to the NBRS Summer 2014 Newsletter
\nIt has been an eventful and busy last six months. We have assisted 204 people with airfares making a total of 3,847 people we have helped. There are fewer people arriving on the Special Humanitarian Visa (SHV) and more arriving on the family visas. It has been very difficult to get family members a SHV so most recently arrived refugees are applying under the family migration stream. If the sponsor has arrived in the last five years as a refugee, we will help the family. We are also helping a number of families who are sponsoring orphan relatives.
\nThis year the number of refugees in the world reached 50 million, the highest number since the Second World War. It is a time of urgent need. It is disappointing that at this time of great need Australia has reduced its refugee intake by about 30%. It is really sad that the arguments made for not helping refugees is somehow us doing the right thing. If we really want to help refugees we need to increase the number of visas we offer. We will only grant about 13,750 refugee visas this year. This compares with about 100,000 per year in the 1950\u2019s, although not all of these were classified as refugees. Sadly, we are not responding as generously to those is crisis as we have in the past.
\nThe movement of refugees seeking safety is complex. The refugees leaving Syria at present have no safe place, the violence is following them. There are almost no visas offered to people in refugee camps; less than 1% will be granted a visa to a Western nation. The rest will stay in poverty with no long term solution; many will spend their whole life in refugee camps.
\nI am constantly amazed by the strength of those we assist. There is the Ebola crisis in West Africa, ISIL in Iraq and Syria not to mention the other problem areas of the world. The sponsor has to wait a long time for the visa to be issued so they can bring their families to safety. There are limited visas granted each year and required information isn\u2019t always available, so the applications can take a number of years.
\nOne of the cases we have assisted with is a family of seven from Iraq. The father had arrived by boat in Australia and the application for his family took four years to be completed. When issued, the family were very keen to travel immediately. They are stateless people so needed an exit visa, which isn\u2019t easy or quick to achieve. IOM decided to take them to Kurdistan as they wouldn\u2019t need the exit permit. It was a 600 km drive through an area that is very close to the ISIL fighting. They got to the border only to be refused entry so they travelled back to Southern Iraq very tired and disappointed. The father in Australia was beside himself with worry but luckily had a friend whose brother worked in the airport in South Iraq. He said he could help with the clearance process. Tickets were then booked with a travel agent and soon after\u00a0the family were reunited. The family live in Melbourne so we have never meet them.\u00a0The week after they arrived, I had a call from the father to say the family wanted to
\nthank us for our help. Starting with the oldest child they all came on the phone. \u201cHello\u00a0David, I am Mohamed. Thank you.\u201d I think that was about their total English! The\u00a0oldest sounded suitably serious but by the youngest all I could hear was laughter and\u00a0happiness in her voice. It was a very special moment. I am sure they will have a long\u00a0and happy life here having escaped from the horrors of Iraq.<\/p>\n

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Another case we assisted with was a family of three coming from Liberia. The Ebola\u00a0crisis gripping West Africa is a potential disaster looming. There are nearly 25 million\u00a0people living between Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia so the risks of been infected\u00a0are currently low. The Minister of Immigration has introduced a quarantine of 21 days\u00a0for all those travelling to Australia. The day it was announced we had a family in\u00a0transit who were stopped in Abu Dhabi, as their visa was suspended. It looked like\u00a0they would need to return to Liberia. We suggested that the family approached their\u00a0local Member of Parliament to seek assistance. Sharon Bird\u2019s office in Wollongong\u00a0was very helpful and, after many late night calls to the Department of Immigration,\u00a0they were allowed to continue to Australia. The sponsor was delighted.<\/p>\n

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We assisted a lady bringing her two daughters (9 and 11) from West Africa. There\u00a0were problems with the application and it took four years before the visa was granted.\u00a0Sometimes not all the information is available and previous applications may contain\u00a0conflicting information. This needs to be clarified and it all takes time. Finally the visa\u00a0was granted and we arranged for the girls to come. This isn\u2019t always easy as the girls\u00a0were unaccompanied and needed assistance with each transit. IOM do a wonderful\u00a0job of managing the travel. Before they were able to come, the new quarantine\u00a0arrangements for people coming from Ebola countries were issued. The girls had to\u00a0undergo 21 days of supervised quarantine. It cost nearly $5,000 plus the airfares\u00a0have jumped in price as so few airlines are now flying out of Ebola affected countries.\u00a0We met them at the airport. Mum and her sister were there early but the children\u00a0came out in a different section. We arrived just as the girls came out. They were with\u00a0officials from Quarantine and Customs. Mum arrived shortly after and there was a\u00a0very emotional reunion. As one of the Quarantine ladies said with tears in her eyes,\u00a0she couldn\u2019t imagine missing out on so much of her daughter\u2019s life. One of the others\u00a0made the comment that she doesn\u2019t allow her 9 year old to catch the bus by herself\u00a0and these two had just spent nearly 3 days travelling from West Africa as well as 3\u00a0weeks in quarantine. How lucky are we born in safety and wealth?\u00a0The girls will start school next week. Mum is still laughing.\u00a0We are still self-funding and are not looking for donations. Loan repayments continue\u00a0successfully but we did have to write off a number of loans this year for various\u00a0reasons. Loan defaults are still below 1% of loans made.
\nI hope you all have a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2015.
\nDavid Addington
\nChristmas 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n\t\t\t\t

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A Project of the MANLY FRESHWATER CATHOLIC CHURCH Mary Immaculate and St Athanasius Church Patrons: Bishop David Walker, Tom Keneally, Des Hasler 6 Raglan St, Manly, NSW, 2095 Website: www.nbrs.org.au Email address: nbrs@optusnet.com.au Welcome to the NBRS Summer 2014 Newsletter It has been an eventful and busy last six months. We have assisted 204 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-news-stories","odd"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3420"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3423,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420\/revisions\/3423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sjaroundthebay.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}