Hello
A large number of leaders from Indian Australian community met in the Harris Park community centre earlier this month. Several international students were there too.
UIA, GOPIO, FAIA, Australian Punjabi Heritage Association, AISA, Australian Punjabi Business Association, Punjabi Council, Malayali Association, Tamil Manram, TAA, Hindi Samaaj, Deepavali Committee of NSW and others were represented. Many other associations have extended their support too.
Harry Singh, Raj Datta, Moninder Singh, Rohitas Batta, Padmanabham Karamil, Navjot Singh, Ajay Sharma, Ranjit Khera, Prabjot Sandhu, John Niven, Amarinder Bajwa, Lucky Singh, Harry Walia, Vish Vishwanathan and many more were there. I joined it too. Several student leaders like Raveena Garg, Apoorv Chaturvedi and Syed Sakib were there to share their situation.
From this meeting, a group called “Friends of International students” comprising of 10 people was constituted. Its membership is listed in the website which is enclosed.
http://fairgo4internationalstudents.org/
There is a concern among people in regards to the potential for unfair outcomes for the former international students, if the Visa capping bill 2010 becomes an Act. This Bill, if it becomes an Act, will give powers to the Immigration minister to apply “cap and terminate” provisions of this Act retrospectively.
As another post in my Blog [ http://tinyurl.com/2ftcspt ] explains, this Bill has some features which may have very serious implications for former international students who have completed their training/education in Australia, have applied for the PR and are on bridging Visa currently. No body has any argument about the prospective application of the powers of the Act [if this Bill is passed] but people are very concerned about the potential use of the “capping and cull” powers retrospectively.
BTW, others also have concerns in these matters. Some links are enclosed.
http://tinyurl.com/2exu5cd
http://tinyurl.com/265hxht
My appeal to you is;
-to visit the Website http://fairgo4internationalstudents.org/
-to consider supporting the petition in support of these ex-students[who have been here for years, finished their training, have applied for PR and are on bridging Visa.
-and to forward the links to your friends and contacts for their support.
Regards
Yadu Singh/Sydney/26th June, 2010
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