Most mornings when Mohammad* wakes up, he looks at his phone just like most other Australians today. But while we all check our email, Facebook or missed calls, he checks his UN mobile app that tells him what bombs have gone off overnight in his home country of Afghanistan. The day I met him,
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In September, the Andrews Labor Government announced $15 million in funding to provide 3,000 placements for VET courses to people seeking asylum on eligible visas in Victoria from July 2016 to June 2018. This has been made possible through an agreement between the Victoria State Government and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) who will directly
Read moreThe human cost of Australia’s immigration detention system is revealed in media reports detailing conditions inside the Christmas Island detention centre, where people seeking asylum are languishing with little outside contact, difficult access to legal assistance and inadequate mental healthcare. Refugee advocates Pamela Curr, from ASRC, and Sr Brigid Arthur, from the Brigidine Asylum Seekers Project, travelled to Christmas
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Refugee advocates Pamela Curr, from ASRC, and Sr Brigid Arthur, from the Brigidine Asylum Seekers Project, traveled to Christmas Island to visit the men seeking asylum, who are currently held in the detention centre, more than 2600 kilometers from the nearest capital city, Perth. There they found an environment of fear and physical violence where
Read moreWritten by John Kelly, ASRC Campaigns Manager Television presenter Sonia Kruger’s Trump-esque call for a ban on Muslim immigration and the subsequent social media and talkback radio conflagration show how quickly our national discourse can descend into fear and loathing. Yet, while political and media voices calling for discriminatory policies pose a challenge to our
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