Australia is set to issue its one millionth refugee visa since 1947 in the coming weeks, in a humanitarian program that grew directly out of the ashes of World War II.<\/p>\n
In 1947, then-immigration minister Arthur Calwell signed an agreement with the International Refugee Organisation in Geneva to accept people from war-ravaged countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The initial agreement was for 4,000 refugees and decades later Australia’s humanitarian visa program is about to hit a new milestone.<\/p>\n
Paul Power, chief executive of the Refugee Council of Australia, said millions of Australians had a direct link to the program.<\/p>\n
“People’s parents or grandparents might be refugees who came to Australia to escape persecution and have contributed greatly to national life,” Mr Power said.<\/p>\n
These are three of their stories.<\/p>\n
Tan Tan Le came to Australia as a refugee following the Vietnam War in the 1970s.(Image: Supplied)<\/p>\n
Tan Le remembers the perilous journey she made as a four-year-old girl on a tiny, crowded fishing boat with her family, trying to escape Vietnam six years after the war ended in 1975.<\/p>\n
Ms Le said her family made the journey in a bid for freedom, even with the threat of pirates and starvation.<\/p>\n
“We spent months in a refugee camp in Malaysia, living under conditions of immense uncertainty,” Ms Le said.<\/p>\n
“The moment we got the [Australian] visas we knew the immense sacrifices and the terror of the sea journey were not in vain.” Tan Le as a little girl (far left on family friend\u2019s knee) waiting with her family in a refugee camp in Malaysia after fleeing Vietnam. Her mother and sister are in the centre of the photo.(Supplied: Tan Le)<\/p>\n
Ms Le said her family worked hard after arriving in Victoria, and were embraced by a “welcoming and diverse” community.<\/p>\n
“My mother immediately started working on farms, picking vegetables, then she took on a job at the Holden factory in Port Melbourne,” Ms Le said.<\/p>\n
“She also had an unwavering commitment to our education; she eventually earned her own master’s degree and was later elected Mayor of Maribyrnong.”.<\/p>\n
She said the “biggest impact” of the humanitarian program was the “infusion of resilience, drive and diverse perspectives”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s not simply an act of charity, it’s an enrichment of Australia’s destiny.”<\/p>\n
Mahamed Mahamed Hussein Abdelhag Omer is a refugee from Darfur region, Sudan, and arrived in Australia after waiting nearly ten years for a refugee visa.(Settlement Services International)<\/p>\n
The day Mahamed Hussien Abdelhag Omer and his family were accepted as refugees to Australia was one of the best days of his life.<\/p>\n
He said when the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) called with the news, he felt like the “happiest person in the world”.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old is originally from Sudan’s Darfur region, and went to India to escape violence in 2015.<\/p>\n
“Many students were getting arrested \u2026 so my father advised me to study abroad,” he said.<\/p>\n
He said he later lost contact with his family, but when he went back to check on them, he found they were having issues with the Arab Janjaweed militia.<\/p>\n
Families at a displacement camp this year in the Darfur region of Sudan.(AP: via Norwegian Refugee Council)<\/p>\n
“Then I had to escape to avoid being detained,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Omer arrived in Sydney in September 2024 with his mother and most of his siblings.<\/p>\n
His father and one of his brothers were unable to leave while they waited for visas after fleeing to neighbouring countries separately.<\/p>\n
Mr Omer said it was worth the near 10-year wait for an Australian visa.<\/p>\n
“It was my dream to come here, [Australia] was a land of opportunity and safety,” Mr Omer said.<\/p>\n
Mr Omer said his family recently celebrated their first year in Australia, based in Western Sydney.<\/p>\n
“You can see a big change in the way my siblings talk and how they view our futures. There is no need to worry about safety or gunshots.”<\/p>\n
Elena Elena Gartner with her granddaughter Dana.(Supplied)<\/p>\n
Elena Gartner, originally from Brno in former Czechoslovakia, was forced to flee as a 20-year-old with her family as Soviet tanks rolled into town.<\/p>\n
“I still get a bit emotional nearly 60 years later talking about our escape across the iron curtain,” Ms Gartner said.<\/p>\n
In early 1968, the country experienced a brief period of political liberalisation, crushed months later with an invasion by Warsaw Pact troops.<\/p>\n
During the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, protesters carry their national flag past a burning tank.\u00a0(Wikimedia Commons: Central Intelligence Agency)<\/p>\n
“Because we were supporters of [leader Alexander] Dub\u010dek, we knew …that we were likely to be arrested and persecuted soon.”<\/p>\n
Her family packed a small bag each and left behind their belongings, before driving to the borders to Vienna before they closed.<\/p>\n
Ms Gartner said it was difficult leaving extended family, who suffered persecution afterwards.<\/p>\n
“This was something that we found difficult to live with.” Josefska Street in Ms Gartners home town of Brno in the Czech Republic.(Supplied)<\/p>\n
She said her family was able to build a new life in Australia, including her tertiary studies and work as a translator.<\/p>\n
“We made many friends here. By the time we moved to Canberra in 1974, we felt pretty much at home,” Ms Gartner said.<\/p>\n
“We thought Australia was heaven on earth after our experience of life in a communist country where the slightest attempt for political reform was met with a forceful end.”<\/p>\n
University of Sydney professor of public law, Mary Crock, said Australia’s endorsement of post-war migration was seen as an “opportunity particularly in the context of ‘populate or perish’.”<\/p>\n
“What it said from the get-go was that Australia was very committed to the idea of trying to do something,” she said.<\/p>\n
The Department of Home Affairs said the precise timing of the granting and location of the one millionth humanitarian visa will not be known in the short term.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson said the Australian government was committed to “generous and flexible humanitarian and settlement programs that meet Australia’s international protection obligations”.<\/p>\n
“As refugee situations around the world increase in scope, scale and complexity, Australia is committed to finding sustainable global solutions for refugees,” they said.<\/p>\n
Shadow Immigration Minister Paul Scarr said it was important to celebrate refugee contributions.<\/p>\n
“Our humanitarian visa settlement program is part of the Australian story, it’s part of who we are as an Australian people.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia is set to issue its one millionth refugee visa since 1947 in the coming weeks, in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[164584,55077,64,63,164585,44,2733,5427,84890,161107,670,5611,6900,66046,77273],"class_list":{"0":"post-284867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-1-million-refugees","9":"tag-asylum-seeker","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-humanitarian-visa","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-nsw","15":"tag-poland","16":"tag-refugee","17":"tag-sudan","18":"tag-sydney","19":"tag-vietnam","20":"tag-war","21":"tag-world-war-ii","22":"tag-wwii"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}