Every night Maram cries for her father. \u201c\u2018Dad, Dad, Dad\u2019, all the time she is screaming,\u201d the two-year-old\u2019s mother, Fatima Zhour, says. \u201cShe misses her father, and she can\u2019t understand why she cannot see him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maram hasn\u2019t seen her father, Yasser al Moussawi, in six months, since she and her mother, who is an Australian citizen, left Lebanon<\/a> for Sydney.<\/p>\n Moussawi is stranded in Lebanon, driven from his home in Beirut after it was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, and unable to reunite with his family. While waiting for his partner visa to be assessed, he has unsuccessfully applied three times for a visitor visa .<\/p>\n \u201cI am absolutely devastated. I am not eating, not sleeping,\u201d Australian-born Zhour tells the Guardian. \u201cI am always on my phone, calling in the middle of the night to know that he is still alive, checking news of what has happened in the war.\u201d<\/p>\n Lebanese citizens with partners and children in Australia say they are being refused visitor visas, even as weeks of bombardment have devastated homes across the country and damaged Lebanon\u2019s fragile economy.<\/p>\n Displaced from home by the war, Moussawi spends an hour-and-a-half each way driving to work \u2013 in itself a risk because of the unreliable ceasefire in place, and foreign troops on the ground.<\/p>\n Against the advice of her extended family, Zhour says she is contemplating returning to Lebanon to reunite her family.<\/p>\n \u201cWithout my family together, I don\u2019t know what is my future,\u201d she says. \u201cMy daughter misses her father, and I wish to be reunited with my husband. I am frightened, and I don\u2019t want to put my child\u2019s life at risk, but we need to be together.\u201d<\/p>\n Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n During the Covid pandemic, the Australian government changed legislation to allow partners of Australian citizens who had made partner visa applications offshore to travel to Australia on visitor visas, and have their partner visa application assessed while in the country.<\/p>\n Senior registered migration agent with Borderless Migration in Sydney, Fatima El-Kheir, told the Guardian it used to be a straightforward process. But since the current US-Israeli war in the Middle East began, she says many of her clients who have applied for visitor visas from Lebanon have been rejected.<\/p>\n Fatima al Moussawi with her husband, Yasser al Moussawi, and daughter, Maram. Photograph: Supplied by family<\/p>\n \u201cA client of mine in south Lebanon received a visitor visa refusal just hours after significant escalation in the region,\u201d she says. \u201cOne hundred airstrikes targeted the region. More than 250 [people were] killed. More than 1,200 injured. She has already been displaced from her home more than once.\u201d<\/p>\n Other migration agents have reported similar refusals, and they say that in times of crisis or conflict, some countries are put on unofficial \u201cblacklists\u201d from which it is almost impossible \u2013 regardless of compelling circumstances \u2013 to have a visa application approved.<\/p>\n In the wake of US and Israeli strikes on Iran in February, militant group Hezbollah \u2013 backed by Iran \u2013 resumed rocket strikes on Israel.<\/p>\n Israel responded with massive bombardment of southern Lebanon and the capital Beirut, and launched a ground invasion, which it says targeted Hezbollah. More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, and more than 1 million people displaced<\/a>, roughly 20% of the country\u2019s population.<\/p>\n A fragile ceasefire has held despite repeated violations, with the US president announcing on Friday it would be extended another three weeks.<\/p>\n El-Kheir says cases of visitor visa applications from countries such as Lebanon raise significant questions about the operation of Australia\u2019s avowedly non-discriminatory migration system.<\/p>\n \u201cHow are compelling and rapidly changing humanitarian circumstances being weighed in temporary visa decisions?\u201d she asks.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not about one decision, but about consistency, transparency, and the role of discretion in genuinely complex situations \u2026 what if this person did end up killed while waiting for a visa?\u201d<\/p>\n El-Kheir says the rejection letters read like \u201ccut-and paste\u201d refusals, with identical language and grounds being offered, such as that people were not genuine visitors and would not return home \u2013 a moot point for an applicant with a pending partner visa.<\/p>\n She says it feels discriminatory because applications from other countries are being approved.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is heartbreaking having to tell their Australian family members that the application has been refused, that they can\u2019t be reunited, even as this conflict goes on.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs told the Guardian the Australian government was \u201cmonitoring the situation in Lebanon closely\u201d and that people intending to travel to Australia from the country were not limited to a single visa pathway.<\/p>\n The Covid-era changes to policy, and subsequently legislation, allowing for partner visas lodged offshore to be granted to people in Australia, were confirmed by the spokesperson.<\/p>\n \u201cEach case is assessed on its merits, taking into account the individual circumstances of the case and the most current and relevant country of origin information,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n In March, the Australian government imposed an arrival control determination<\/a> for Iranian nationals, banning Iranian passport holders from entering Australia on a tourist visa, arguing they were unlikely to return to a country at war. Critics condemned the action as a \u201cbreathtaking moral failure<\/a>\u201d, but the home affairs minister Tony Burke said \u201cdecisions about permanent stays in Australia should be deliberate decisions of the government, not a random consequence of who had booked a holiday\u201d.<\/p>\n In Sydney, Fatima Zhour says she waits for news from the conflict zone, and hopes to be reunited with her husband, and for him being able to hold his baby girl again.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is all I can do. I have to do it for my daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every night Maram cries for her father. \u201c\u2018Dad, Dad, Dad\u2019, all the time she is screaming,\u201d the two-year-old\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":636633,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-636632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636632","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=636632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636632\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/636633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=636632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=636632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=636632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}