After 10 years of pain and uncertainty my family risks being torn apart by Labor’s deportation bill
OPINION | Migration Justice
If the bill passes, my husband – who fled war in Sri Lanka and is father to our three children – would be put in jail if he did not immediately leave Australia
By Vashini Jayakumar
My name is Vashini Jayakumar. I am a mother, a childcare worker and a permanent resident of Australia. I am also one of the people whose families risk being torn apart by the government’s deportation bill.
If this bill is passed, my husband, Riswan – who is the father of our three young children – would be put in jail if he does not immediately leave Australia, just because he refuses to leave me and our young children. This is not right – it is inhumane. It is more trauma for our family, after more than 10 years of pain and uncertainty.
I arrived in Australia by boat from Sri Lanka in 2012, with my parents and two siblings.
In 2017, we were granted Safe Haven Enterprise visas, because of what we had been through in Sri Lanka. Recently, we were granted permanent Resolution of Status visas.
We will soon be eligible for Australian citizenship.
But despite this, my family is not safe in this country.
In 2020, I married Riswan in Brisbane. He is also from Sri Lanka and fled the war, just like us, in 2012. But his refugee claims were assessed through the “fast track” system and he was refused. He appealed all the way through the courts but was not successful. He is now on a Bridging E visa and being told to leave the country.
My husband and I have three children together – Thanushsri, who is six years old, Alyaa, who is three, and Ruh, who is just one-and-a-half. They were all born in Australia. They do not have any other home.
We have made requests for mercy to the minister before, but they have been refused. In 2019, the UNHCR issued an interim direction to the Australian government not to remove Riswan, because of the harm that he faced in Sri Lanka.
Over the past decade, Riswan and I have made a life in Queensland. I work as a childcare worker; Riswan works as a carpenter, in the construction industry. We are both connected to our work, our colleagues, our communities. Our eldest daughter just started school.
Before I met my husband, I was involved in the struggle for justice for Priya and Nades Murugappan. I lived in Biloela for around a year in 2015, which is when I met Priya, and we became friends. In 2018, when Priya and the family were taken from their homes to detention, I was one of the first to raise the alarm. I called others into the community and we got into action – we located Priya and we found her a lawyer to defend her family. Over the years, I became Priya’s voice, interpreting messages from her lawyer and helping her to speak with the media. It took us almost four years to help free Priya and Nades from detention and get them back to safety in Bilo.
In 2019 when the Morrison government tried to deport Priya, we managed to stop that deportation. We all rejoiced when this government was elected and Priya, Nades and the girls were given permanent residency.
It is a nightmare to think that this government wants to pass a law that would have put Priya and Nades in jail for five years, just for refusing to leave their family and community behind.
It is unimaginable to me that the Albanese government would do this to us. This government promised justice and a reversal of everything that the previous government had done to us. To read that they want to put us in jail, to force people like Riswan out of the country, is unbelievable.
But I am hopeful that, when the Australian community finds out what the government is trying to do, it will reject it. Just like the community did with Priya and Nades. Our community is better than this.
Vashini Jayakumar is a mother of three children, childcare worker and was a campaigner and interpreter for the Home to Bilo campaign