A group of the 56 Chinese refugees who arrived on the Isabella in north-west Australia had just got their visas to stay in Australia for four year.
Several of them will live in Canberra and continue to study English, others will return to Melbourne to work. It has been a long bureaucratic battle with authorities, fought on their behalf by Marion Le and others.
The group were in the Port Hedland detention centre for more than a year before the Government recognised the refugee status of some of them. Mrs Le points out the seemingly arbitrary nature of the process. Some with seemingly identical circumstances get different status. The cases of the remaining Chinese from the Isabella and some Cambodians who came by boat are still going through the courts.
Twenty-six from the Isabella are still in Port Hedland.
It has been an unseemly, protracted mess.
Xiang Liang Chen is happy to be in Australia. He was an orator and participant in the democracy movement. They took away his job as a teacher.
He and 55 others left in June 1991. Their trip to Australia included being jailed in Vietnam and Indonesia and a tough interrogation in Singapore while police held guns to Chen’s head and back.
They were ship-wrecked in Indonesia and spent four months in jail until someone (either Chinese Christians in Indonesia or Indonesian authorities in a roundabout way) gave them another boat.
They landed in the inhospitable north-west on New Year’s Eve. Their story is well-known.
Chen Ling Ming, who is to settle in Canberra, walked for three days with no food or water until he found and killed a small crocodile with a stone and a stick. He is eternally grateful to the farmers who found him.
The group was in the north-west for more than two weeks before they were all found.
All of them say they would be jailed if they went back to China. Some have wives and children in China and a too scared to say much. One of the group has two children, which is a breach of China’s one-child policy.
Xiang Liang Chen says he was in hiding for a year before he made his escape. He is happy to be in Australia, “”but sometimes I get very upset because English very poor.”
“”I must study hard English to make it in Australia,” he said. “”I like to do something good for Australia.”
Chen knows the hard way that proficiency in English is the single most important factor in getting a job. He has often been rejected on that ground and his English is among the best of the group. Some have got work in a clothing factory in Melbourne and some in the Sunrider food business.
Others in the group are excellent classical guitarists and organ players.
But the main game now for all of them is to improve their English and to do further battle with the bureaucracy to get their remaining friends, relatives and loved ones out of the Port Hedland detention camp. In that quest they are fortunate in having the help of Marion Le and others who are appalled that the thing can drag on so long.
“”If they thought they weren’t genuine refugees, why didn’t they send them back immediately?” Mrs Le asks.
Australian authorities are being presented with the same question and are having some difficulty coming up with credible answers.