Email to my Australian MP
Apr. 1st, 2021 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12I have just written the following email to my Australian MP. I know there are Australian people (both in Australia and overseas) in my circle here, and I would strongly urge you to write something similar to your own MPs. Australia has in general handled the pandemic really well, but its handling has made collateral damage of Australians overseas, with really disastrous consequences.
Email is below:
Dear Tanya,
I am a voter in your electorate, and am writing to express my deep concern about the situation facing thousands of Australians stranded overseas due to the pandemic. Their plight fills me with horror — not least because I, too, am an Australian living overseas, and but for my own good fortune, I might have shared their fate. I am lucky enough to have dual citizenship for the country in which I live (so there's no risk of me overstaying a visa), and I have a job and stable housing here as well. I miss my family in Australia, but I am happy to wait to see them once international flights are more regular again.
However, thousands of other Australians like me are not so fortunate. Through no fault of their own, they have been forced into situations where they lost their jobs, their income, or have reached the limits on their current visas and now have no legal right to remain in the countries in which they find themselves. Children have missed more than a year of school, and some chronically ill or disabled Australians have been cut off from essential medical care.
I know you have spoken out on this issue in the past, and I am pleased that you have done so. However, the situation has now reached crisis point, with the news that a group of the stranded Australians have taken legal action against the government and filed a complaint with the United Nations on the basis of a breach of their human rights. I urge you to continue to raise awareness of this issue, and hope that you and your Labor Party colleagues will continue to hold the government to account, as they have utterly failed in their responsibility to this group of Australian citizens. Thanks to swift action and good leadership from the state governments, Australia's pandemic response is rightly the envy of much of the world — but this relatively small impact from Covid-19 must not come at the expense of the safety, lives and livelihoods of Australians trapped overseas.
Edited to add that I don't want the comments section of this post to degenerate into vicious arguments about the rights and wrongs of closing the Australian borders. As an immigrant myself, I obviously take it quite personally if someone implies that stranded people are to blame for their own predicament, or that the Australian government is right to ignore their plight and bar them from coming home.
I do not have the emotional energy to respond further to comments along those lines. Nor do I want to spend my Easter holiday monitoring comments to this post. This is an emotive issue, and I posted my letter to the MP in order to encourage others to do the same, and to provide something of a template, should it be helpful.
Email is below:
Dear Tanya,
I am a voter in your electorate, and am writing to express my deep concern about the situation facing thousands of Australians stranded overseas due to the pandemic. Their plight fills me with horror — not least because I, too, am an Australian living overseas, and but for my own good fortune, I might have shared their fate. I am lucky enough to have dual citizenship for the country in which I live (so there's no risk of me overstaying a visa), and I have a job and stable housing here as well. I miss my family in Australia, but I am happy to wait to see them once international flights are more regular again.
However, thousands of other Australians like me are not so fortunate. Through no fault of their own, they have been forced into situations where they lost their jobs, their income, or have reached the limits on their current visas and now have no legal right to remain in the countries in which they find themselves. Children have missed more than a year of school, and some chronically ill or disabled Australians have been cut off from essential medical care.
I know you have spoken out on this issue in the past, and I am pleased that you have done so. However, the situation has now reached crisis point, with the news that a group of the stranded Australians have taken legal action against the government and filed a complaint with the United Nations on the basis of a breach of their human rights. I urge you to continue to raise awareness of this issue, and hope that you and your Labor Party colleagues will continue to hold the government to account, as they have utterly failed in their responsibility to this group of Australian citizens. Thanks to swift action and good leadership from the state governments, Australia's pandemic response is rightly the envy of much of the world — but this relatively small impact from Covid-19 must not come at the expense of the safety, lives and livelihoods of Australians trapped overseas.
Edited to add that I don't want the comments section of this post to degenerate into vicious arguments about the rights and wrongs of closing the Australian borders. As an immigrant myself, I obviously take it quite personally if someone implies that stranded people are to blame for their own predicament, or that the Australian government is right to ignore their plight and bar them from coming home.
I do not have the emotional energy to respond further to comments along those lines. Nor do I want to spend my Easter holiday monitoring comments to this post. This is an emotive issue, and I posted my letter to the MP in order to encourage others to do the same, and to provide something of a template, should it be helpful.