The Crippling Impact Of Second Stage 3 Lockdown On Melbourne’s International Students-By Alicia Vrajlal

Migrant communities in Melbourne are facing hardships during the pandemic.

Source:Huffingtonpost

Since March, not a day has gone by when Nadeeka Thilakarathne hasn’t cried, praying her husband will return to Australia after leaving to visit his sick mother in Sri Lanka four months ago. 

Seven months pregnant and jobless in the Melbourne suburb of Springvale, the international student is facing Melbourne’s second stage three COVID-19 lockdown alone. Like many migrants in Australia, she faces unique challenges during the coronavirus pandemic that have taken a toll on her financially, physically and emotionally. 

“It’s destroyed everything we built here,” the 30-year-old told HuffPost Australia over the phone from her Melbourne home.

“As students, we hardly earn money and we pay for everything. However, we [somehow] settled. And now again we are at the beginning, and we have to start from the beginning.” 

Visas And Financial Hardship 

Thilakarathne came to Australia on a student visa with her husband in October 2018, and the couple have lived in a sharehouse with a Sri Lankan couple and another woman since then. Her husband worked as a cleaner at a pub until March, when he lost his job due to COVID-19 restrictions. 

He left for Sri Lanka soon after, and weeks later, when Australia’s border restrictions tightened, Thilakarathne realised her husband wouldn’t be allowed to return. He’s neither an Australian citizen nor a permanent resident, which are the criteria to fly back to Australia.

“I applied a couple of times for extensions for travel restrictions for my husband to come here, but… I don’t know what the criteria is,” she said. “Because this is a humanitarian reason. I don’t have any support here. I’m a special-needs person.”

Australia’s tight travel restrictions mean returning travellers must be Australian citizens or permanent residents.

Not only did she lose her core source of emotional support, but her financial one too. Her studies at Melbourne Polytechnic have been paused because she can’t pay her fees. She now has till December to pay or her Confirmation of Enrolment (CoE) will be cancelled. 

“I had [savings] in March/April. My husband sent me the money from Sri Lanka,” she said. However, that helped for only a few weeks. 

Australia has more than a million temporary visa holders who don’t have access to welfare payments, Medicare or the recent JobSeeker/JobKeeper schemes. The only Victorian government support Thilakarathne received was a one-off $1100 payment called the International Student Emergency Relief Fund.

Mental Health 

Besides being pregnant and having high blood pressure, her mental health has suffered over the past few months. 

“The ultimate thing is depression,” she said. “My husband’s always telling me don’t cry” because of the baby.

“I’ve got my counselling service from my university [on the phone], but at the moment I need my husband,” she said. “Everyone is worrying about me, but no one can give a solution to me. So it’s a headache for me to talk to everyone.”