WELCOME HOME: Rose City ripe for refugee settlement

Plan to settle more asylum seekers in regional towns receives mayoral support.

Filipino Community of Warwick and Surrounds president Leleth Sorono moved to Warwick to give her daughter Deneve a brighter future. Seeing her children blossom made the difficult move worthwhile and now she is helping others do the same.

REGIONAL centres like Warwick could soon become a hub for refugees if a new federal government recommendation gets the go ahead.

As the Federal Government prepares to release the highly anticipated Shergold review of refugee and humanitarian settlement, Southern Downs residents have shared their thoughts regarding a recommendation to settle half of all new refugees outside Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne by 2022.

Southern Downs Region mayor Tracy Dobie believes the move is exactly what the region needs.

“I think it’s a really important aspect of rural and regional Queensland,” Cr Dobie said.

“We had our biggest citizenship ceremony just recently and it was indicative of how multicultural we are becoming.

“We’re a large council area with a small population, We need to hit a sweet spot of population to keep rates as low as we can keep them and to keep infrastructure maintained and liveable.

“I would love to have young people to stay here but that’s not realistic.

“We need to have people who can do those jobs. That’s why I welcome immigration.”

After moving to Warwick from The Philippines 15 years ago to give her children a chance of a better life, no-one knows what the Southern Downs can offer more than Leleth Sorono.

“If it had only been me and my husband, we would have stayed back home but we were looking at the future for our children, “ Mrs Sorono said.

“A big part of it was providing better opportunities … and I still believe there’s better opportunities here, especially for migrants.”

While Mrs Sorono came to Australia on a skilled migrant visa, as an organiser of the Filipino Community of Warwick and Surrounds, she saw how many refugees flocked to the region for its job opportunities.

“It’s the jobs that the Southern Downs offer,” she said.

“We have members of the community working at the piggery farm and, recently, there’s been young Filipinos who were initially based in Brisbane but moved up here because they were offered a job from Churches of Christ or Akooramak.”

But not all residents agreed with the idea.

Donna Thurnley said she might have welcomed refugees at a previous time but drought and job scarcity had left her concerned about the prospect

“Our business owners are all struggling, farmers are laying off people. It’s not a good time.

“We don’t have what they need, they will increase our problems and shift their own problems,” she said.

While Mrs Sorono understood how people could be worried about such a placement, she also saw it as an opportunity to bolster tourism.

“I can understand where they come from, I came from another country and this is their place,” she said.

“But their skills would be different to what we currently have, they have their own culture and can add flavour to what we have in the region.

“The more colours we have the better is it. The more it attract migrants and tourism. Warwick is a vibrant community and when there’s multiculturalism, it will attract people to come visit.”

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