Advocacy

.The first big advocacy win that CRSA contributed to was, of course, the announcement of the CRISP program. The success of this program is CRSA’s current operational focus, but that doesn’t mean that our advocacy work has ended!

We continue to advocate for policies, programs and resources to ensure that community-led efforts to welcome and support refugees can grow and improve Australia’s humanitarian migration program in line with our organisational mission.

Our current policy priorities include:

• advocacy work to ensure that the CRISP program becomes permanent and additional to the humanitarian intake quota;
• advocacy, research and design work to create an affordable ‘named’ sponsorship program allowing Australians to sponsor refugees they know; and
• establishing educational sponsorship pathways for refugees wishing to settle in Australia.

A NOTE ABOUT ‘ADDITIONALITY’:
The CRISP program currently draws on visas from within Australia’s overall humanitarian quota. However in 2023 the Albanese Government increased this quota to 20,000 places per annum (previously 13,750 places per annum plus the special Afghan intake of 4,000 places per year for 4 years), partly aided by the new CRISP model. We continue to advocate for community sponsorship programs like CRISP to become structurally ‘additional’ to the humanitarian intake quota but are pleased that CRISP is now making a contribution to an enlarged government-backed Australian resettlement effort.

Encouragingly, in December 2023 the government made a pledge at the Global Refugee Forum stating an aspiration to expand community sponsored and other complementary pathways for refugees to 10,000 places per year and to also progressively increase the traditional government-led resettlement quota in the future (see summary here and also ALP National Platform).  

We welcome more organisational endorsements of the Global Refugee Forum Australian Community Sponsorship Pledge

Consider adding your organisation’s endorsement to a pledge in favour of more refugees having the opportunity to rebuild their lives in safety in Australia through ‘community sponsorship’, in addition to the government maintaining and building government-led resettlement programs.

CRSA developed and launched this pledge in the lead up to the Global Refugee Forum in December 2023. More than 70 organisaitons endorsed the pledge in the lead up to the forum but the pledge remains ‘live’ in the lead up to the next forum in 2027. By endorsing the Australian Community Sponsorship Pledge, we will collectively be telling the Australian government and the global community that we will do our bit to support and expand community sponsorship. More

May 2023: Submission to Department of Home Affairs consultation on Australia’s Annual Humanitarian Intake for 2023-24

Our submission elaborates on our key advocacy points (see above) and can be read here.

April 2023: Complementary Pathways

Australia has or is piloting a range of initiatives that could provide safe pathways for the world’s 32,5m refugees. In partnership with the Refugee Council of Australia, Talent Beyond Boundaries, the Refugee Education Special Interest group, the Settlement Council of Australia, CRSA has developed policy principles for unlocking these pathways. More