Shame on you Australia. Are you really going to let your government deport a child from the only home he has ever known just because he's autistic? Where is your humanity, your empathy, your basic human decency?
I simply can't understand why more people are not up in arms about this, but on the assumption that the lack of discussion this case has generated is a result insufficient media attention, not of apathy or acceptance, I have to do what I can to bring attention to this travesty of justice.
Maria Sevilla brought her two and a half year old son to Australia in 2007. Over the past 8 years she strove hard to educate herself, working part-time whilst studying and eventually qualifying as a nurse. She now holds a senior position at a regional Queensland hospital. From the accounts of people who know her, she is a productive and committed member of her community.
Maria Sevilla applied for a skilled working visa (489) and was denied on the basis that her son, Tyrone, has an Autism Spectrum Disorder. Tyrone's diagnosis lead the Department to conclude that the family did not meet the health criteria as candidates whose condition could cost the country in excess of $40,000 during their lifetime are excluded.
Ms. Sevilla appealed the Department's decision to the Migration Review Tribunal, who last week upheld the Department's original decision. Assuming that she has the financial and legal support, which is by no means a given, she can apply to appeal that decision through the Tribunal. In the meantime, she is also asking the Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, to step in and exercise his discretionary power and grant her visa.
Even if we were to be so callous as to simply focus on the economic aspects, Maria Sevilla is a tax-paying member of our community and moreover she contributes by nursing her fellow regional Queenslanders back to health so that they can also return to being tax-paying members of our community as well. She is not sitting back expecting the people of Australia to support her and her son - she is actively supporting us.
The potential costs to a society of accepting migrants who might require additional social support during their lifetime is a valid concern, but we must be careful of putting a dollar figure on someone's worth. How can we simply say 'nah, you're going to cost us too much'! At the age of nine, we have effectively determined that this child will
be a drain on society and told him that he is unwanted, that he'll never amount to anything, and that we're not willing to waste our time on him. Are we really a country that has so little compassion?
In this case, we're talking about a child who moved to Australia when he was two and a half years old. Note that this was before his diagnosis, so there can be no suggestion that his mother tried to 'rort the system' by bringing him here or any such thing - we accepted him when we thought he was healthy, but now that we find out he's not we want to send him away again. How is that not discrimination?
Tyrone's now nine, and he knows no other life than his life in Australia. His maternal grandmother is here, as are his maternal uncle, aunt and cousins. His mother reports that she has no family support in The Philippines. Tyrone does not know the language there. The nature of his condition means that adapting to change is incredibly difficult for him.
It is completely within the realm of possibility that being ripped away from his extended family, his home, its language and the routine that he has come to know would be such a great distress to him that he would never fully recover. Leaving aside what care, education and opportunities might be available to him to him in The Philippines, the disruption caused to him by the deportation itself should be sufficient for us to ask ourselves how we can even consider subjecting a child to that level of distress.
I want to say more about the nature of Autism Spectrum Disorders, and the potential of people with ASDs to contribute to their society, but that point is better made by those who have greater knowledge on that subject than I do. I also don't want to unnecessarily limit this discussion to a particular type of perceived 'dis'ability, as that would focus solely on what one assumes someone cannot do, rather than focusing on what they can.
I think that's actually the crux of the argument. We can't just look at someone and know what they might be able to achieve. We can't take a diagnosis and assume that a human being is nothing more than the label that a doctor has placed on them. And while we technically 'can' create legislation that places a dollar limit on how much we as as a society want to spend on the people we let live here - the question is, should we?
If we do so, we focus only on what we assume a person can't do and discount what contributions they might be able to make. We also dismiss the value of the contributions that the rest of their family can bring to our society simply because their family unit includes someone who we summarily judge to be unworthy. Moreover, as this case highlights, we risk abandoning a member of our community and causing a child untold distress simply for the sake of saving a few bucks.
This is an appalling situation and this is not the Australia that I want to live in.
Please support Maria Sevilla's petition here: https://www.change.org/p/the-hon-peter-dutton-mp-please-don-t-deport-my-9-year-old-son-to-a-land-he-doesn-t-know-because-of-his-autism
