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“We need to stop treating the family as icons and understand that there are equally deserving families in need of relief,” he said. “We have to end all cruelty, not just one part.”
Salmon said that among the families who remained in limbo were some who arrived by plane and those who came by boat, and highlighted the “arbitrary” treatment of people who should receive protection as refugees.
Jana Favero, director of the Asylum Seeker Resource Center, said about 10,000 people were in the same position as Biloela’s family.
“The fight is not over. They have been granted bridge visas, not permanent protection, which was expected,” he said.
Bronwyn Dendle and Angela Fredericks, who live in Biloela and are friends of the Murugappans, have been campaigning for four years to return the family to Queensland and thanked the decision on Friday. The family is currently in Perth and must complete the visa documentation before flying east.
“Obviously, the girls have to say goodbye to their school friends,” Fredericks told ABC, adding that the community was hoping to have the family back in Biloela before Tharnicaa’s fifth birthday in June. .
“We can’t wait to celebrate this anniversary with her, her first non-stop birthday and finally a visa.”
National leader and former Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has in the past called for the family to return to Biloela and said that on April 24 her position had not changed, but that others within the Coalition were against giving the family the right to remain in Australia. .
In his last days as Prime Minister, Scott Morrison argued that Australia owed no protection to the family because the courts had not considered them refugees. He was accused of deceiving voters last week when he said the government could not give the family the proper visas to return to Biloela.
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Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration, estimated that there were about 18,000 asylum seekers with temporary protection visas and 10,000 more still pending.
About 100,000 more were in the community while seeking asylum, Rizvi added. This included 27,000 awaiting government decisions, another 36,000 pending appeals to the Administrative Court of Appeal and 31,000 to whom the government had denied them asylum and lost their appeals to the court. .
Rizvi estimated that the government would have cost millions of dollars to detain the Murugappan family in recent years, noting that the Christmas Island Detention Center was reopened to keep them there.
“There are tens of thousands of other families in the same situation as the Murugappans, except they did not arrive by boat,” he said.
“It simply came to our notice then. The family was chosen for political reasons. “
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