Refugee reunions come at cost

from the Age

by Brendan Nicholson

THOUSANDS of refugees are living in poverty in Australia because of a system that obliges them to pay air fares for family members to follow them here.

Research conducted in Victoria for the Refugee Council of Australia says many are suffering from malnutrition and living in overcrowded and stressful conditions as they battle to raise the money for air fares. Some are homeless.

The council says up to 7000 of the more than 13,000 refugees who come to Australia under the special humanitarian program are sponsored or "proposed" by someone here who pays their air fare and helps them settle.

More come to Victoria than to any other state and most of the proposers are former refugees themselves.

The council says that while some proposers receive interest-free loans to cover the cost of air fares, most borrow money from "informal sources" — "in some cases with excessively high interest rates and short repayment periods".

"The desire to access funds as quickly and easily as possible once the visas have been issued has made proposers vulnerable to exploitative loan arrangements," says the report, Who bears the cost of our humanitarian program?Sometimes families are split because of long delays in raising loans, the research found.

In most cases where the proposer was not a spouse or a child of those being brought in, the debt was transferred to the new arrival.

Burdened by the debt, many were unable to afford their own accommodation and were forced to live with their sponsor, often in overcrowded conditions, until the loan was paid off.

"This placed significant strain on the relationship between the proposer and the new entrant resulting in some cases in the relationship breaking down at a crucial stage in the new entrant's settlement process," the report says.

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