We’ve all seen the sob-stories from nongs who decided that, even when the looming scale of the Xi Plague had become obvious to everyone who wasn’t funded by Chinese state media or on the WHO junket, hey, they still had time to take that cruise. Even as some international ports began locking out cruise ships, some of these clowns figured it was still OK to pack their ailing grandma along on a floating petri dish.
It’s a bit hard to drum up sympathy for such twits, but other stranded international travellers seem to have a bit more cause to complain.
Avtar Singh Kalsi and his wife, Paramjit Kalsi came to Melbourne from Punjab’s capital city, Chandigarh, earlier this year to spend time with their daughter on a three month-visitor visa.
“Our return flight was on March 21, and our visa expiry date was March 27. But due to the lockdown in both countries, we had no choice but to stay on in Australia. To do this, we had no choice but to get a visa extension,” says Mr Kalsi.
This compulsion cost the couple a significant amount of money.
Unlike the Johnny-cruise-latelys who tried to cram in an international holiday even when the pandemic was obvious to everyone except Beijing’s paid propagandists, the Kalsis came to Australia in the New Year, when only the faintest whispers of a disease outbreak in a single Chinese province were beginning to make headlines. No one had much reason at that stage to suspect what was coming.
Sure, they could have cut short their holiday, but it seems likely that, with the return flights already booked, they figured they would be home before things got too bad. Remember, just a week before they were due to fly home, New Zealand’s own prime minister was still adamant that mass public events like the planned Christchurch anniversary would go ahead. The Australian government had travel restrictions for arrivals from Hubei province, and eventually all of China, in place in early February. But wholesale border closure was being dismissed by the media as some kind of xenophobic right-wing fantasy.
By the end of March, the Australian government had issued a blanket do-not-travel advice. Then Qantas suspended all international flights.
“In addition to the visa extension fee of $375, we had to pay $340 for a mandatory medical check-up. Then came a local insurance policy, and the migration agent’s fee of $300. This process, which was not of our making, cost us $1150 per person,” says Mr Kalsi, who had to pay over $2200 for himself and his wife[…]
“On the other hand,”, says Mr Kalsi, “the Indian government has given free visa extensions to tourists and an additional 30-days free-of-cost to leave the country after the international flights resume”.
Some of the problems stranded tourists like the Kalsis are facing seem to also be due to plain old red-tape Catch-22s.
Melbourne-based migration adviser Navjot Singh Kailay says that[…]while Australia has launched a free-of-charge visa in the current coronavirus scenario, called the Temporary Activity visa (subclass 408), everyone doesn’t meet its criteria.
“As far I know, it hasn’t been granted to anyone to far. Many people have applied for it while on a visitor visa. That is not a valid application because subclass 408 requires the applicant be ineligible for any other visa,” he signs off.
It was obvious to everyone by mid-March just what was in the wind. Should the Kalsis have upped stakes and fled a week or two earlier than planned? Maybe, maybe not.
However you cut it, though, they were stranded in Australia by the decision of the Australian government. It seems the least the government could do would be to waive its own fees that resulted.
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