The return of Australia’s largest asylum seeker support service to Footscray will help the growing number of new arrivals living in the west.
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) will return in March from West Melbourne, its home since outgrowing the Footscray shopfront where it began in 2001.
Chief executive Kon Karapanagiotidis (pictured at the new site) said the independent organisation would continue to fight fearlessly for the human rights of asylum seekers.
“We do this through our advocacy and direct services, including housing, employment and training,” he said.
The Nicholson Street premises will be three times the size of the current centre, helping more than 4000 asylum seekers next year via a food bank, material aid and health, legal and counselling assistance.
Mr Karapanagiotidis expects a 300 per cent rise in demand for support, fuelled by what he sees as the worst situation for asylum seekers in Australia in 30 years. This includes more than 1000 children in detention facilities and almost 23,000 asylum seekers living in the community without the right to work.
Mr Karapanagiotidis slammed the Australian government’s freezing of the processing of protection applications, describing it as an “unprecedented attack on the rights of asylum seekers”.
“The government readily admits that the decision to cap arrivals at current levels, thereby freezing all processing of refugee claims, is retaliation for Labor and the Greens blocking the reintroduction of temporary protection visas.”
He said halting protection visas would create uncertainty for more than 33,000 people who had fled persecution. The ASRC has launched a Christmas appeal to help raise the $1 million needed to make the move to Footscray and secure its long-term future.
