Osama Butti and family among first refugees granted visa by Peter Dutton

Iraqi Osama Butti and his family are among the first of the 12,000 to be granted Australian visas by Peter Dutton.

Peter Dutton Visits Jordan

One of the phone calls new Australian resident Osama Butti will make after being presented with his official Australian status by immigration minister Peter Dutton this morning, will be to old friends from the Zyouna neighbourhood in the eastern suburbs of Baghdad.

“I will tell them I have won the lottery,’’ says Mr Butti, who along with his 36-year-old wife Hanan Proty, 14-year-old son Saif and 12-year-old daughter Mina, was one of the first four families to be granted a humanitarian visa under the expanded 12,000 places for Iraqi and Syrian refugees.

“There are just 12,000 places and we are four of the first, it is a lottery.’’

Less than 100 of the refugees will be granted their visas before Christmas so they can settle in over the summer, but the remainder will “take some time’’ says Mr Dutton, who said handing the visa was a throat-catching moment.

“There are good days and bad in the immigration portfolio and today was a good day,’’ he said, reflecting how two of young boys from another Iraqi family, the Soras, spontaneously kissed him on the cheeks.

“I have three kids, 13, 11 and nine and the two boys were about the same as my two boys and when you think quickly in your mind about the lives they have led to this point and the contrast couldn’t be any starker.”

“Providing these kids with hope and opportunity they would never have had makes you feel like you have done the right thing.’’

Mr Butti, a 50-year-old who used to travel the world helping project manage for international corporations, and Ms Proty, a biologist, include a Muslim Sunni family, a Shia Muslim and a Kurdish family in their small group of friends to receive the phone call – and a Christmas photo of a shorts-clad Santa on an Australian beach.

“We lived together in the same neighbourhood for 30 years and we are friends and even now, they share our happiness and our sadness,’’ said Mr Butti.

Outwardly the Butti family appear affluent and well connected, are well dressed and well fed. It is obvious they will assimilate easily into Australian society and prosper, and their refugee claim was enhanced by very close family connections to Australia. But their journey has not been easy.

As practising Christians in Iraq, they had been increasingly uneasy at the security situation in Iraq and the consistent threats by Islamic State.

But they decided to flee their home when there were threats to Mr Butti, who had been overseeing a project for government troops within the infamous heavily fortified Green Zone area of Baghdad.

Mr Butti would organise recreational activities for the troops who were on leave for four days “to relax before they went back to their units’’.

But it was the paralysing fear that young Mina would be kidnapped and killed that spurred the family decision to flee to Jordan.

Mina was the only girl in her class that didn’t wear a hijab and had been warned she would be targeted because of that.

“I was so scared, ISIS was killing lots of girls, especially Christian girls,’’ Mina said revealing a recurring nightmare that ISIS would attack her house in the middle of the night.

Ms Proty’s sister Samah, who lives in Sydney, sponsored the family’s application and was wildly excited that the family received the official documents.

Samah had arrived two years ago as a refugee but Ms Proty said “she doesn’t feel like a refugee because Australia is so welcoming.’’

The family will reside in Melbourne where two of Mr Butti’s sisters live: Afrah, who married an Australian man, and Eshraq who immigrated several years ago under the family reunion scheme.

Mr Butti then asks the impossible question: “which is the better city?’’

Saif refused to use the services of a translator in order to practice his English and told The Australian he was excited to meet a kangaroo.

His father interjected and said with a laugh: “we have been told we will see them everyday when we open the window and they will be sitting on your car’’.

The first priority, said Mr Butti is to find a home so that the children can start school at the end of January and then to find work.

“When I got he phone call asking us to come back in I thought we may have done something wrong or it was bad news, so to find out we have a visa was unbelievable,’’ Mr Butti said.

“I feel very happy for my children’s future and maybe now I can get some good sleep, I haven’t been able to do that very much worrying about what will happen to me and my family.’’

The Australian embassy in Jordan has expanded to cope with the increasing numbers of applications to relocate to Australia under the humanitarian scheme. Mr Butti said he had found the process quite straightforward.

“We applied in August 2014 and the government spent a year studying our case and Samah got a letter a little while ago telling her that our file had been transferred to the Australian embassy in Amman. We got a call on October 1 this year, an interview on October 6 and one week later we completed our medical exam. Two weeks ago an Australian delegation came to see us and on November 1 we were told that maybe we might get a visa so don’t be surprised.’’

The family don’t know of any other refugees coming to Australia, and those that they knew who had fled Iraq had ended up in Sweden, the United States and Germany.

It is uncertain when the embassy has organised for the family to fly out, but as far as Mr Butti is concerned it can’t come quick enough.

“We will get on the plane tonight,’’ he said.

Jacquelin Magnay in Jordan