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Asylum seekers slip through Australia's coronavirus safety net – photo essay

This article is more than 3 years old

Already on the margins of society and excluded from the government’s support mechanisms, asylum seekers on temporary visas are left with no income and no option to return home

The day dawned bright and warm on 26 January and Nadia felt buoyed by the sunshine.

Four days earlier, she had found a job, and a secure future seemed possible for the first time in a long time. She took her three teenage children on a rare trip to Sydney Harbour.

“I felt good,” she says. “I felt I was beginning my life again. I could refresh my life in a safe place.”

  • The Asylum Seekers Centre in Newtown

Three months later, as Covid-19 wreaks havoc across the world, Nadia feels she has been left with nothing. She has a roof over her head for the time being, but no income, no savings and, critically, no safety net.

“I came to this place to protect my children, to make a good life for them. But now I don’t know how I can do that,” she tells Guardian Australia. “It is so much stress – I am scared and I worry every day. But I can’t tell my children everything I am scared for; I don’t want them to be worried.”

Nadia says her phone credit is about to expire, and she can’t afford to keep her battered old mobile switched on. She skips meals so her children can eat, or encourages her family to sleep longer so they have fewer meals.

“Sometimes,” she says quietly, “at tea time, I say ‘let’s sleep’.”

‘When I can’t give my children food, that is the hardest’

Nadia arrived in Australia with her three children in 2018, having fled years of unrelenting family violence in her home country in south-east Asia (her name and country of origin have not been revealed for her safety). Nadia has made a claim for asylum and is living on a bridging visa while it is assessed.

Steadily, she has built a life in this country, first finding a job waiting tables in a restaurant, and then as a chef’s assistant, where the hours gave her more time with her children.

  • Asylum seeker Nadia

But on 16 March, as Australia’s economy went into sudden shutdown in response to the Covid-19 threat, Nadia was summarily stood down.

Like thousands of others, Nadia does not know when she might be able to work again, but because she is on a bridging visa, she is excluded from all the government’s support mechanisms. There is no safety net for asylum seekers in Australia, many of whom were living precarious lives even before the pandemic.

Nadia has fallen behind in her rent already, and while a moratorium on evictions might keep a roof over her head for the duration of the pandemic, her future is desperately insecure. For others renting informally, the moratorium is little protection.

  • Top to bottom: Post-it notes adorn the Asylum Seekers Centre; volunteers prepare food and care parcels for home deliveries

With social distancing enforced, Nadia’s children study now from home. They don’t have a television or wifi in their apartment. The family shares a laptop, donated by the Asylum Seekers Centre in Newtown, hotspotted from Nadia’s phone. Her daughters take turns to complete their schoolwork online.

“We don’t need entertainment or anything more. We just need help with rent and with food, then we can be OK. When I can’t give my children food, that is the hardest.”

Even before the pandemic many were among Australia’s most vulnerable people

In constructing an unprecedented $130bn stimulus package to save Australia’s economy and as many jobs as possible, the federal government has argued it “had to draw the line somewhere”, which meant the exclusion of hundreds of thousands in Australia on temporary visas.

The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, said: “This is a massive call on the public purse and it is a debt that the country will pay for years to come, and at six million people on the jobkeeper program, that’s nearly half the Australian workforce.

“Add an extra million [a conservative estimate of the number of temporary visa holders who might seek assistance] on to the jobkeeper program, that’s an extra $18bn. We had to draw the line somewhere and I think the Australian people understand how generous, how significant this package is.”

The government’s primary message during the pandemic to those who are not citizens has been simply to “go home”.

“Temporary visa holders who are unable to support themselves … over the next six months are strongly encouraged to return home,” the acting immigration minister, Alan Tudge, said this month. “For these individuals it’s time to go home, and they should make arrangements as quickly as possible.”

But for those who have come to Australia seeking asylum, a return home is not only unpalatable but potentially dangerous, perhaps impossible.

Even before the pandemic they were, in many cases, among Australia’s most vulnerable people. They often worked in precarious employment in the gig economy, at risk of exploitation, underpayment and dangerous work practices. Now they find themselves stranded in a foreign country, without the fallback of family or the assistance of networks and friendships built up over a lifetime.

In many cases, they are entirely alone.

‘People are facing destitution’

Since arriving in Sydney, Nadia and her children have been regulars at the Asylum Seekers Centre’s kaleidoscopic sanctuary in Newtown.

  • The Asylum Seekers Centre in Newtown

Beyond the basics of meals, food parcels, medical treatment and employment assistance, they found a sense of community here, born of shared experience.

In normal times, the dining hall is boisterously full. Now it is quiet. “Before, in Australia, I could be outside,” Nadia says, “to work, to come here to meet people. Now, we are just inside all the time. We feel very alone.”

Lockdown has forced the centre to rapidly transform its operations. The foot of the stairs is packed with boxes of food to be delivered by pairs of volunteers across greater Sydney.

Above: Frances Rush, the CEO Asylum Seekers Centre. Below: nurse and health manager Leonie Agnew.

The centre’s chief executive, Frances Rush, has a makeshift office that was formerly the counselling room, thanks to social distancing. She says her organisation, which largely relies on donations, is spending $35,000 a month in basic emergency relief.

“People are facing destitution. The only just way out of this is a Centrelink allowance, to allow people to maintain their accommodation, to give them some level of stability.”

Many of those now relying on food parcels, Rush says, have been working in Australia, some for years, paying taxes and contributing to their communities. “Where are these people going to go? Who is going to support them?”

At the Asylum Seekers Centre, nurse and health manager Leonie Agnew says consultations are by appointment now, and, as much as possible, conducted over the phone. Most of the patients don’t have a Medicare card, so the nurse-led primary health clinic, with volunteer doctors, is their only option for medical treatment.

Those who need to go to an emergency department can get a waiver letter, and the centre keeps up the supply of critical medicines for patients with diabetes, hypertension or heart conditions.

Agnew says many patients have complex health needs, many have histories of torture and trauma, and the stress of the pandemic is an additional burden.

“Sometimes it’s just being here and listening, acknowledging they’re going through a tough time, and that they’re not alone. It’s asking, ‘Are you OK?’”

Nadia’s response to that question is a day-to-day proposition. Tomorrow will be the phone. The next day might see the arrival of another unpayable bill. The next, finding a way to adequately feed her children.

“Before this, I was starting to begin my life again. Now every day is a challenge,” she says. “Every day I worry.”

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