I was scrolling through Twitter one day and saw the hashtag #letthemstay trending.
That's when I first heard about Priya and Nadesalingam and their two daughters.
I’ve always been interested in stories about people seeking asylum and refugees in Australia, but this time the hashtag was trending about a story that I didn’t expect to read.
A Tamil family who had been living in Queensland were removed from their home and sent to a detention centre. The family had fled from Sri Lanka due to the persecution of the Tamil people.
I cannot compare my life to what this family is going through at all, but there’s something about seeing people who look like your friends, who look like your family, who look like you, that makes you think: I don’t belong in this country.
As a daughter of someone who worked in immigration, I know that obtaining a visa is an extremely difficult and intricate process. Especially if English isn’t your first language. And especially if you don’t have an agent.
Watching this family come in and out of the news cycle always made my stomach churn. Not only because their story seems to worsen by the minute, but also because it gives people the opportunity to showcase their racism.
I’ve seen some extremely vile and disgusting opinions about this family. Opinions that completely disregard them as people, opinions that have nothing to do with their case, opinions that could easily be applied to myself just because of the colour of my skin.
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