Monday 14 July 2008

Two young people will recount their experiences of, respectively, being an unaccompanied migrant to the United States and a refugee in Australia at the launch of the documentary Posada during the MAGiS08 Youth Festival next week.

Posada tells the stories of three young unaccompanied migrants who travelled to the US from various countries in Central America. The film's director, Jesuit priest Mark McGregor, was inspired to make the documentary while working as a chaplain in juvenile detention centres in Los Angeles. 'I met hundreds of these children, languishing in detention facilities for months. I was inspired by their faith and resiliency,' he says.

Johny Figueroa, one of the migrants featured in Posada, is currently attending World Youth Day in Australia. He will tell how he left Honduras as a teenager and was subsequently detained by immigration officials in the US. Akuol Diing, who fled Sudan as an 8-year-old, will discuss her experience as a refugee and her eventual arrival in Australia at the age of 20.

The panel, which will be facilitated by prominent Jesuit priest and lawyer Fr Frank Brennan SJ, includes experts in the field of immigration, refugees, slavery and human trafficking: the Director of Jesuit Refugee Service Australia, Fr David Holdcroft SJ, the Managing Director of the Not For Sale Campaign, Mark Wexler, committee member of Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans (ACRATH), Sr Suzette Clark RSC, as well as Fr McGregor SJ.

The launch of Posada at the MAGiS08 Youth Festival is particularly timely given Pope Benedict XVI's address on the 94th World Day of Migrants and Refugees earlier this year in which he urged "host" countries such as the United States and Australia to welcome displaced people in a spirit of understanding and compassion. '[Catholic] teaching holds that a basic moral test is how a society treats it most vulnerable neighbours,' says Fr McGregor. 'We need to search for greatness in how we treat newcomers.'

In the US, more than 80,000 immigrant children aged between four and 18 make their own way into the United States each year. In Australia, where no land border exists, illegal immigration seems less important. 'Australia is however not immune to the global forces that force many people to move,' says the Director of Jesuit Refugee Services, Fr David Holdcroft SJ. 'These amount to increasing competition for finite resources. It is time we introduced a fair guest worker scheme for people from nearby countries such as East Timor and the Pacific as well as increase our quota in the intake of refugees.'

Members of the media and the public are invited to attend this 45-minute discussion on Wednesday July 16 at 7pm, at the Gonzaga Barry Centre at Loreto Kirribilli. A screening of Posada will follow at 8pm.