Gulima Wahidi considers herself and her family among the lucky ones. In 2005, aged eight, she, her mother, and her four siblings were finally granted visas to come to Australia to join their father, Afghan refugee Isaq Wahidi, who'd arrived here by boat five years earlier.
"I remember that day like it was yesterday," she told Fairfax Media. "It was the best feeling ever, to be here putting my arms around him after so long."
Today the family are prospering. Gulima, now 20, and her sister Rahima are qualifying in law. Oldest brother Madad has a supermarket, her middle brother Ali Khan has joined the army with IT qualifications, and youngest brother Ali Zafar is aiming at medicine.
Yet so much was in the timing. It could all have been so different if her father, a member of the persecuted Hazara minority, had arrived a year or two later.
"My father came in 2000, and after 2001 we all know what happened [with the start of offshore processing]. Our lives would have been completely different, we would have been in detention centres. When I think about that, it blows my mind."
On the other side of the country, Hadi, who arrived as an asylum seeker in 2010 and now lives in Perth working as a tiler, has a very different story to tell. He has a wife and three children in Afghanistan whom he has not seen for seven years. His fourth child has died in the period since his departure. He has at least another five years to wait before he can apply to bring them out here – that is, if he is successful in gaining his Safe Haven Enterprise visa, for which he is still waiting.
"It is not easy to tell someone what I am feeling because it is so painful" he says. "My son, if I see him in five years, will be a man – that is if he survives. If I go back the Taliban will kill me, and then my wife and children would surely die after me."
Hadi's plight is common to thousands of asylum seekers around the country, highlighted in a report released this weekend by the Refugee Council of Australia. The council says family reunion has become difficult enough for refugees on permanent visas – with increasingly long waiting times, and in many cases very high fees – but virtually impossible for those on temporary visas as successive governments in Canberra have narrowed the options for family reunion.
The report, based on extensive surveys of asylum seekers by the council's policy officer Sahar Okhovat, warns "the physical security offered by Australia is offset by the ongoing mental anguish of family separation".
It finds there can be a wait of up to 14 years for heavily restricted family reunion places under the Special Humanitarian Program, where demand outstrips places by seven to one.
In desperation, some asylum seekers turn to other visa categories where very high fees apply, impoverishing themselves in the process.
Jiren, from Sudan, lost most of his immediate family in the war in his native country but finally managed to bring some of his wife's family members out this year under a pilot community sponsorship scheme. It took them seven attempts over a decade, and cost him and his wife $32,000 for which they saved by each working several casual jobs at a time.
For those seeking parent and aged parent visas, waiting times now stand at 30 years, the report says, calculating that the total cost of bringing both parents to Australia for those who try to do so under a fast-tracked family stream of the migration program can reach nearly $100,000. The Refugee Council says opening more pathways for asylum seekers who are legally resident here to reunite with families would bring huge social benefits.
"The government's current suite of policies is keeping families apart," says the council's acting chief executive Tim O'Connor. "We have men who sometimes have never met their children, or get to kiss them goodnight or hold their loved ones. We want refugees who come here set up to prosper. Where they can't have families around them, can't pick kids up from school, these policies meant they don't get that basic psychological support to help them integrate quickly. It undermines social cohesion and sets refugees up to fail."
The council will be launching a Fair Go for Families campaign following the report. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection is withholding comment until it has examined the report.
The report's key recommendations:
- Allocate 5000 visas under the family stream of the migration program for refugee and humanitarian entrants
- Reduce processing times
- Substantially reduce visa application charges and other obstacles, and restore funding for professional migration advice services
- Consult with refugee communities and other stakeholders on developing needs-based concessions for refugees under the family stream of the migration program