Susana Garcia’s mother was due to come to Australia from Colombia in March last year. Ms Garcia, who lives in Sydney, was weeks away from giving birth.
Then, the day before her mother’s flight should have arrived, Australia announced it would be closing its borders.
“I started to struggle with my pregnancy in lockdown. I started crying every day, knowing my mum wasn’t coming for the birth of my boy,” Ms Garcia, 36, said. “I’m an only child as well. This was my mum’s first grandchild.”
The first weeks of her newborn son’s life were harrowing. As Ms Garcia struggled with postnatal depression and caring for her baby while her husband was at work, she received devastating news from Colombia. Her father and grandmother had contracted COVID-19.
She lost them both within weeks of each other and was forced to attend their funerals via Zoom.
Susana Garcia, from Colombia, has struggled in Australia without her mother's support. Source: Supplied
More challenges were to come.
Ms Garcia lost her job at the University of New South Wales in November as a direct result of the pandemic. Then in December, she discovered to her surprise that she was pregnant again.
With no way still of bringing her mother to Australia, she said she now has severe anxiety over who will help her look after her toddler when the baby arrives and how she will afford childcare for them both so she can return to work. She also worries about her mother.
“Now my mum is by herself in Colombia and she can’t come and be with me,” Ms Garcia said.
Ms Garcia and her mother in Sydney before the pandemic. Source: Supplied
“Every day I romanticise about having her here … It’s heartbreaking watching her having to interact with my son via Zoom.
“I need my mum. We need help.”
Ms Garcia has applied twice for a travel exemption for her mother to come to Australia. Both applications have been rejected.
Prioritising Australians
Since Australia’s borders closed in March 2020, more than 100,000 people have applied for a travel exemption for a parent living overseas to be able to enter the country. Many more have applied to leave Australia in order to see a parent overseas. The majority of applications have been rejected.
While spouses, de facto partners, dependent children and legal guardians of Australian citizens and permanent residents are allowed to enter Australia, parents are not.
The Australian Border Force said its current restrictions are necessary to protect people in Australia from COVID-19, enable as many Australians to return home as possible (there are still about 40,000 stranded overseas), and ease pressure on quarantine systems.
“The approximately 100,000 permanent and temporary parent visa applications lodged from outside Australia … is indicative of the cohort that may actively seek to travel or visit Australia,” an ABF spokesperson told SBS News.
For some Australians or permanent residents, being apart from parents for an extended period of time is untenable. Source: AAP
“A cohort of this size cannot be accommodated within the current quarantine caps”. Currently, are allowed into Australian airports under caps set by National Cabinet.
While acknowledging the difficulties for extended families seeking to reunite, the ABF said there are currently no plans to include parents in the definition of immediate family for the purpose of travel exemptions.
It grants exemptions on a case by case basis where reasons are “compassionate and compelling”.
“These include, but are not limited to, needing to travel due to the death or critical illness of a close family member,” the spokesperson said, adding that all exemptions are “balanced against the government’s intent in protecting the health of the Australian community”.
But with nearly half (49 per cent) of all Australians either born overseas or with at least one parent born overseas, according to the 2016 census, the policy has a widespread impact.
Community petition
Ms Garcia has sought solace and support in the Parents are Immediate Family Facebook page, a rapidly growing community of thousands of Australians who just want to see mum and dad.
ABF rejections among them are frequent and cut deep. But amid the heartache, there are flickers of hope.
In April, some members of the group titled Exemption for Parents of Australians and Permanent Residents. It argues in its mission statement that “reunification with family should be a compelling and compassionate reason” for a travel exemption.
It closed last month, attracting more than 70,000 signatures in just four weeks.
On Tuesday, Independent MP Zali Steggall will table the petition in the House of Representatives, with Greens Senator Nick McKim to table the petition in the Senate on Wednesday.
Ms Steggall says the current border policy was only meant to be temporary and is untenable.
“Many people are now considering their options and may permanently leave. Australia may face a significant skills drain if this policy is not reviewed,” Ms Steggall said in a statement.
“A third of Australians are born overseas and are struggling with the separation from family or partners overseas and the government has refused to extend travel exemption categories to family members and visa holders.
“It is becoming untenable for the federal government to have no long-term plan. We are facing a skills drain," she said.
Senator McKim says the current border policy is “utterly devoid of compassion and humanity".
“It’s time the federal government understood the human pain their border control system is causing," he told SBS News.
Greens Senator Nick McKim said Australia's current border policy is “utterly devoid of compassion and humanity”. Source: AAP
“Australian citizens, permanent residents and temporary visa holders have been separated from their families for 15 months now with no end in sight.”
It’s time the federal government understood the human pain their border control system is causing. - Nick McKim, Senator
Like Ms Garcia, many migrant families also rely on parental support for childcare, Senator McKim added, and having this support available would allow more people to get back to work.
“Globally, the pandemic is going to go on for some time and people simply need a pathway to enable their families to reunite.”
Some countries have started to carve out such pathways.
Canada has said it will expand the number of visas offered through its Parents and Grandparents Program in order to bring more families together in 2021. It has also made special exemptions for some US citizens with family in Canada to allow them to cross the border.
In Germany, close relatives including grandparents are allowed to enter the country from outside the EU for a child's birth. In the Netherlands, parents and grandparents are permitted to enter the country to meet a child born after 19 March 2020 - the date the country closed its borders.
Senator McKim said the government needs to create more quarantine spaces so more people can come and go from Australia safely.
Other politicians, including Liberal MPs Dave Sharma, Tim Wilson and Jason Falinski, have also called for vaccinated people to be able to travel abroad without special permission and to be able to quarantine at home on their return, allowing Australians to see overseas relatives.
'Absurd and humiliating'
Sydney-based Kateryna Dmytriyeva, 33, has been using her digital marketing expertise to try to raise awareness of the parents petition.
She is frustrated that a lack of available quarantine spaces is keeping families apart when those wanting to come to Australia may already be vaccinated and could quarantine at their relatives’ home, posing less risk to the community.
Originally from Ukraine, Ms Dmytriyeva has unsuccessfully applied for a travel exemption for her mother, who has been vaccinated, to come to Australia five times.
Kateryna Dmytriyeva has applied five times for her mother to come to Australia. Source: Supplied
Ms Dmytriyeva’s mother was already in Sydney at the beginning of March 2020, having spent a year helping her daughter care for her son while she struggled with crippling depression.
She planned on staying for another year or so but had to quickly leave the country to renew her visa offshore. That was when the borders closed.
“She never returned,” Ms Dmytriyeva said. “My depression got worse after several months of not having the support and childcare arrangements. My child went from zero days in childcare to being there full-time and he was sick all the time.
“I was so stressed not being able to be with him and support him. Balancing my workload with childcare was very difficult. I got to the point where I wasn’t able to function.”
Ms Dmytriyeva with her family before the pandemic. Source: Supplied
Ms Dmytriyeva has supplied additional evidence from her doctor, a psychologist and her employer each time she has applied for a travel exemption for her mother, with no luck.
“This whole process has been humiliating for me and many other people, just trying to prove that we are in a bad enough situation that we deserve to have help from our families. This is absurd.”
I’m a celebrity, get me in here
Throughout the pandemic, Australia has allowed thousands of film crew members, business people, athletes and their families from overseas to enter Australia.
Images of US actress Natalie Portman - in Australia to film the next Thor instalment - in Sydney with her parents in May rubbed salt into the wounds of many. As did the news the same month that the federal government had greenlit British reality show I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! to be shot in Australia.
The ABF said travel exemptions may be granted to people delivering services in sectors beneficial to Australia’s economic recovery, including film and television productions.
“Stimulating the Australian economy is an important part of post-COVID-19 recovery, which is why the ABF is committed to keeping the economy moving as much as possible through trade and travel,” the spokesperson said.
But Ms Dmytriyeva said it is hard to see those in other visa subgroups come and go as they please when contributing Australians are suffering because they can’t see their own parents.
“I’m a taxpayer, I’m an economic contributor and a skilled worker. It may be legal, but is it fair? I don’t think so.”
Senator McKim said family reunions are a human need and “should be prioritised over and above the dollars” when it comes to travel exemptions.
“Money wins out every time over and above immediate family. If you’re on a wealthy investor visa you can come and go out of the country as you please. But if you’re a family separated from a parent or a parent separated from a child, it’s a completely different framework.
“It seems to be one rule for the rich and famous and another rule for everyone else and that’s heartbreaking.”
Permanent departures
Whether or not the petition will be heard in the Lower House, anger will only build as people in Australia spend more time away from their parents.
Peaceful protests are planned around the country on Saturday 24 July urging the government to recognise parents as immediate family and commit to a plan for families to safely reunite.
Meanwhile, , leaving Australia for good to be able to see their families, with others considering doing so.
“Many of these people were working in critical jobs in health care, in aged care, in education, contributing to the outcomes that we all want to see, and now they’re packing up and leaving,” Senator McKim said.
Ms Dmytriyeva said despite spending years building her IT career in Australia, she can’t “wait and hope” forever.
“My child is growing without knowing his family. Now he no longer recognises my mum on her phone calls.
“It can’t continue like this for much longer because people are on the edge. We will continue our fight until we get a result.”
For Ms Garcia, she and her husband are considering moving to Colombia after the birth of their second child, despite knowing that they have no income there and life would be “a struggle”.
“It would be very hard to leave everything behind, Australia is our home. Everything is here,” she said.
“But even though coronavirus is not going anywhere, we are isolated from the world.
“For mental health, you need to see your family.”
Readers seeking support with mental health can contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. More information is available at . supports people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
