The first part of this article concluded with venerable Australian expert Hugh Mackay criticizing politicians in his country who make asylum seekers seem threatening to longtime residents.
Australians have legitimate concerns about the cost of housing. But Mackay compared some politicians to a person leading a horse out of a barn by blindfolding it as if there were a fire, though there’s not one: “If you can incite a bit of anxiety, your position as an incumbent government is more secure.”
Australia hasn’t always curtailed immigration. In 1945, then–minister for immigration Arthur Calwell popularized the phrase populate or perish and said that unless the country grew through mostly white immigration, it would suffer in defense and development.
Australians excluded Asians and welcomed British newcomers until the White Australia policy ended in 1973. For five years, immigration numbers drastically decreased. They have fluctuated ever since. Today, people from Asia and India make up the majority of immigrants to Australia, where the population is seven times greater than it was when the White Australia policy began.
In the late 1990s, Naomi Chua and Chris Helm worked in the government housing estate in Carlton, an inner-city suburb of Melbourne.
Helm said he struggles to find many central figures in the Bible who weren’t displaced or refugees at some point, from Adam and Eve to John on the isle of Patmos: “It’s actually a very common human experience, and God is in the midst of it. From laws to anecdotes and stories of people welcoming and caring for the other, [it] seems absolutely woven through the whole biblical narrative.”
Helm called that biblical history “a mandate. It’s what God calls us to do, to recognize that so many people are not where they want to be, are not amongst their family or their people and therefore need welcome and care.”
Two years ago, Chua began Embrace Sanctuary, a nonprofit group designed to build community between refugees and Australians through education and help in the resettlement process. Chua said they adopt a posture of learning and hearing the refugees’ stories, “so that we become more compassionate, a more welcoming country, which we haven’t always been and aren’t always.”
In January, Chua teamed up with Helm in his role with Scripture Union to welcome 104 people to the Sanctuary Family Retreat in Anglesea, southwest of Melbourne. Family members from Gaza attended, even though they had been in Australia for just two months: “If you want to see what trauma looks like, just see the 7-year-old and the 3-year-old and the 2-year-old. They were just hyper alert. The little girl was screaming all the time. The little boy was punching everything in sight, a ball of rage.”
By the end of camp, after six days of activities and persistent care from the volunteers, the boy was running up to people and hugging them. His mother prepared a Palestinian meal for everyone one night. Helm thanked her for the delicious food.
“She teared up,” Helm said. “She was struggling with English. She was trying to say, ‘No, please don’t thank me. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to cook a meal, to contribute to our community, to share something that I can do with our community.’ She was overwhelmed with gratitude.”
Community-care worker Alexandra Mikelsons said of her clients, “They just need time for someone to listen to them. That is really helpful for people who are not able to be helped in other ways. Like, the reality is, there’s no house for you to stay in. But just being able to chat about it is incredibly helpful for people, and to have people who genuinely care about it and say, ‘This is really awful,’ and can empathize and know that we have hope.”
South of Melbourne, Waurn Ponds Community Church also emphasizes empathy—plus barista-style coffee on the church’s shiny industrial coffee machine. “We were going to charge people when we first got it,” pastor John Richardson said while steaming milk for my chai, “and then I thought, Let’s just be generous.”
Church members serve custom cups of coffee for free on Sundays and during the week, for workers in the childcare center and for attendees of parenting classes and staff meetings. “There’s just something nice about having a nice cup of coffee or chai to build hospitality,” he said as he handed over a steaming cup of tea dusted with cinnamon.
That generous mentality spilled over when Richardson received an email a few years ago about Judith and Fidelis Okogwu, an immigrant South African family whose financial backing had dissolved.
“They had their suitcases, and they had got a rental,” Richardson said. “They had nothing else. They had no cutlery, no beds, no nothing.”
The church quickly put together a team but made sure it included people who had the capacity for long-term relationships, such as “an older woman who would be able to help Judith in the kitchen and set things up but wouldn’t take over, an older man who could have conversations with Fidelis about his own business and be that older man that Fidelis could respect,” Richardson said.
Richardson’s mother, who had done work with Salvation Army for decades, helped him think through what people need after their material needs are met.
“What was really unhelpful was announcing to our church community that we’ve got a family that we need a whole bunch of stuff for,” he said. People are well-meaning, Richardson said, but they give what they don’t want anymore, and then, when the family attends church, they unthinkingly say, “Oh, you’re the poor family that we help out.”
Richardson said, “We can’t help everybody, but when we do, we give the best of what we can, because that’s giving dignity and respecting who they are, that they’re in a vulnerable situation.”
But their situation often becomes less vulnerable over time.
The two women from part one of this story, Tahira and Najeeba Sadaat, visit Mikelsons at 3216 Connect less than once a month now, instead of every week.
Mikelsons still offers food and gas vouchers and helps them fill out paperwork, prioritize bills, and connect with other services.
But it’s not just their material needs that they’re caring for; they have built a friendship as well. Tahira Sadaat said, “Yeah, we talk.”
Amy Lewis is a freelance journalist who lives in Geelong, Australia.
This story has been corrected to clarify that Naomi Chua was the founder of Embrace Sanctuary.
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