When Ravneet Garcha read out loud the letter in her inbox, the house fell silent. Her parents had 28 days to leave Australia, the administrative appeals tribunal wrote. “My parents just went quiet,” she says. “It was devastating.”
Garcha, a 20-year-old nurse, has been living with her mother, Sukhdeep Kaur, and father, Jaswinder Singh, in Sunbury, Melbourne since 2015.
The family migrated to Australia from India when Kaur was sponsored by an employer to work as a cook in their restaurant.
But Kaur and her husband now have to leave Australia by 5 September or risk being deported, unless the immigration minister, Andrew Giles, uses his discretion to grant them visas. All because her employer failed to nominate her for permanent residency.
“As a mother, I came here for a better future for my children and myself,” Kaur says. “We worked hard, we paid everything to the government.”
Her family isn’t alone. Experts say many migrants on employer-sponsor visas seeking permanent residency are beholden to their employers.
‘He had the steering wheel of our lives’
Kaur’s differences with the employer who sponsored her began as soon as she arrived in Australia in 2015 – over when her contract would start, wages, shift patterns and other matters.
Kaur’s sponsor was sanctioned by the Australian Border Force in 2018 for breaching obligations around terms and conditions of employment under the migration law related to sponsored visas.
The sanction meant Kaur’s sponsorship was cancelled and the employer never lodged Kaur’s nomination for permanent residency. The sponsor told Kaur that he had “a friend who will lodge it instead”, Garcha says.
“Our entire life depended on the sponsor,” Garcha says. “He had the steering wheel of our lives.
“She couldn’t apply on her own due to the immigration rules for her profession. [She] had to rely on a sponsor.”
Kaur’s former employer sponsor did not respond to a request for comment.
In May, the administrative appeals tribunal affirmed the Department of Home Affairs’ decision not to give the family permanent residency visas, after a hearing process that lasted four years.
The tribunal member Stephen Witts acknowledged “some media material” indicated “there may have been problems regarding the applicant’s sponsor”.
Witts considered it was possible the family “allowed themselves to be manipulated” by their employer, but was “not convinced that this evidence is credible”.
Garcha says the family provided the tribunal with all the proof they thought could change the decision.
“We were hopeful because we thought the hearing felt positive,” she says. “But when we got the refusal … it was devastating, because that was our last resort.
“We didn’t know, if it was to get refused, what we should have done and what we could do after that.”
This is not how the migration process should be, Garcha says.
“Migrants that come here don’t know exactly the country’s rules. We were bound to believe the sponsor.”
Employer sponsorship leads to ‘power imbalance’
Sanmati Verma, the managing lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre, says Kaur’s case is emblematic of a migration system that leaves workers beholden to their employers.
For the past decade, the surest way to secure permanent residency in Australia has been through employer sponsorship.
“Employer sponsorship arrangements lead to a power imbalance,” Verma says.
Until 2023, it was possible for temporary employer-sponsored visa holders to be employed in an occupation that would not lead to permanent residency, she says.
Verma points to the occupation of cook as an example – the profession Kaur was employed in.
“You could have spent a decade in Australia but you could never transition to permanent residency,” she says, leaving many migrants “permanently temporary”.
From the end of this year, all temporary skilled visa holders, including those with occupations on the short-term list, will have access to permanent residency – so the “group of temporary workers who had been denied even the opportunity to apply for permanent residency will be able to do so”, the minister for home affairs, Clare O’Neil, said in an address to the National Press Club in April.
But the dependence on an employer remains the same, Verma says.
“You are still sponsored by an employer, you are still beholden to that employer: not only for your visa security, but they have to sign off on your permanent residency application.”
The federal government is consulting on whistleblower protections for temporary visa holders, with a new package of legislative powers and funding, a spokesperson told Guardian Australia.
This will include making it a criminal offence to coerce someone into breaching their visa condition, introducing prohibition notices to stop employers from further hiring people on temporary visas where they have exploited migrants, increasing penalties and new compliance tools to deter exploitation.
Verma has said the move is a “critical opportunity” for the government to “design out some of the levers for exploitation in the migration regime”.
But she warns against “window-dressing” reforms, suggesting migrant workers and their allies codesign these protections and urging the end of employer-sponsored visas.
“As a start, there must be basic visa protections to allow workers to leave exploitative employers. And in the long run, workers should be able to qualify for permanent residence without being tied to a specific employer.”
‘Look after those people who come here with dreams’
Kaur is now working in a customer service role with Woolworths to pay rent before her and her husband’s time in Australia is up.
As they begin packing their belongings, she says “we are all just going through depression”.
The family struggle being at home in what feels like a state of limbo, Garcha says.
“You keep thinking that you are going to be leaving soon. You have to pack the bags, sell everything … Everything is a big change.
“It is devastating to be present. To be waiting for so many years for something good to happen, then realising that this was never part of the plan, is devastating.”
Garcha dreamed of being a police officer. When the family was refused permanent residency, she realised she couldn’t apply to an Australian police academy because she wouldn’t be considered a domestic student.
“I had to study something to then be able to live here, so my whole life plan changed,” she says. Graduating from a two-year nursing diploma secured her own permanent residency.
But Garcha will give it up to remain with her parents.
“I couldn’t live here without my parents because I’m here in the first place because of them,” she says. “I studied because of them.
“All they wanted is to settle in a new country … They had plans for a better life. Imagine starting from scratch, somewhere else … after working so hard for nearly 10 years.”
The family are hoping Giles will intervene.
A government spokesperson said the minister’s office was unable to comment on individual cases. They confirmed the department was assessing whether Kaur’s application met the guidelines for ministerial intervention.
Guardian Australia understands that Kaur and her husband will remain in Australia lawfully while ministerial intervention is being assessed. If it is not finalised by 5 September, another bridging visa will be issued.
“The minister is the only way of right for me and my family to justice,” Kaur says.
“We suffered a lot. Now we want justice and a fearless life. It is really a horrible situation. Not just for me. For the other people also suffering and who have no future. Not here, not anywhere.”
Kaur urges the government to “look after those people who come here with dreams”.
“It is not only me. If a foreign worker comes here … and worked hard, the government should take care of those workers. All of them.”
