The writer was a finalist in the 2020 NSW Premier’s Multicultural Communications Public Interest Award for this story
By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, 12 October 2019 (The Week): Australia is a sought-after destination for Indian students, travellers and skilled migrants from India, but it is a little-known fact that Indians also come here to seek asylum.
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), population statistics based on data received from the Australian government, 51 asylum seekers from India in Australia were found to be refugees in 2018. Many of them are waiting to be resettled; others have been waiting for their asylum claims to be processed, some for six years or more, in Australia’s offshore immigration facilities in the Pacific island nations of Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Nauru.
Nisar Ahmad Haji, an Indian national from Kashmir who was processed as a refugee in October 2015, is still waiting to be resettled. A refugee is someone, who has been recognised under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, to be a refugee.