You will recall Peter Moses speaking to us a few weeks ago on Immigration. He has been reading Abbas Nazari’s book “After the Tampa” and really enjoying it.
He wrote to me and said: There are heaps of amazing stories amongst that group of people. I just spoke to a young Afghan woman desperate to get her eldest sister to leave Afghanistan. She herself came to NZ with her younger siblings and mum in 2004. Their brother had been a Tampa boy and had sponsored them.
He now runs two businesses, one sister is a primary school teacher, the other a manager in a bank, and the woman I was talking to an environmental protection officer at the council. They all own their own homes…! In less than 20 years they’ve gone from having nothing to having established a life and to contributing to the country of refuge. Fantastic.
The sad thing is I can’t do anything to help the eldest sister and family. There is no realistic immigration pathway for her. She’s on a waiting list, and has been since 2017, but that is extremely unlikely to go forward.
Leave a Reply