News for Refugees| Advice to refugees seeking sponsorship to Australia |
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Dear friends
Sanctuary Northern Rivers has been sponsoring refugees to apply for a humanitarian visa to Australia for over 6 years now. During this period we have assisted more than 120 refugees to settle in our community.
We regularly get many requests for sponsorship – sometimes up to 50 in a week. This is many more than we can realistically support.
The Board has therefore determined that we will not be making any more offers of sponsorship for the next 12 months (till Dec 2010). This will give us time to deal with those to whom we have extended sponsorship and those from whom we have already received an application.
If you have recently asked us to sponsor you, we will write to advise that either
• you do not meet our priority criteria and we cannot offer you sponsorship, or
• though you are in our priority group, it will be at least 12 months before we can consider your request.
In either case, we would strongly recommend that you explore other opportunities for settlement – either by seeking another organisation in Australia to sponsor you – or trying another country for settlement.
As I have said, we get many requests for sponsorship every week – I know you will understand that we cannot support them all. Please do not send an application to us unless we have indicated that we will sponsor you - we will only accept applications from those who have been advised we will support them.
We appreciate that this decision to not extend further offers of sponsorship for at least 12 months will disappoint many of you. But there is no value in making offers of sponsorship we cannot keep – that would only disappoint you more.
We appreciate your desire to live a life where your freedoms are valued and your hopes for your life can be fulfilled. We hope with you that these dreams may soon be fulfilled.
Yours sincerely
Michael Douglas
President – Sanctuary Northern Rivers Dec 2009
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