The Impossible Decisions Refugees Are Facing This Winter

With the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) overcoming a possible closure just months ago, we understand how impactful the message of kindness and hope is in the face of making difficult choices. 

Through the resilience and generosity of our community, we enter this year’s Winter Appeal with an unfaltering determination, to alleviate the impossible choices that people seeking asylum are facing every day, at least until the Government ensures the rights people have had denied to them. 

As the months get colder, so does the harsh reality of the humanitarian crisis that surrounds us, people seeking asylum are facing impossible choices about things that are basic human rights. A decision between housing or healthcare, a meal or medication – the choices that no one should ever have to make. 

Housing shortages, increased unemployment and high living costs mean that the ASRC are increasingly being turned to, to provide basic support and services by parents looking to provide care for their families. Mothers like Hajira, who are faced with homelessness and no access to healthcare, put their family’s safety in question. 

“Without the ASRC I have no food, no medication, no safety for me and my baby – where would we go?”

While mothers like Hajira are forced to make impossible choices for their families, the government continues to make their choices too. Every year the government maintains their choice to keep budget cuts and not to provide access to safety nets for many people seeking asylum, denying them the right to healthcare, to work, to study and the right to keep their families safe. 

While the government chooses to turn their backs, forcing people to live below the poverty line in our vibrant streets and neighbourhoods, we must not. 

Through your kindness, we can change how many impossible choices people seeking asylum are facing this winter. Together, we can provide safe accommodation, access to healthcare, food security and essential grocery items. 

Your choice to give what you can, stops mothers like Hajira from having to make an impossible decision.