Ian Munro – It is more than seven years since Anna Fam, now 70, fled East Timor with her mother and several of her grandchildren. There is not a moment's hesitation when asked if she would choose to return.

She shakes her head. Her granddaughter, Carla Chung, interpreting, says: "In Australia we have a place to stay. In Timor everything is gone. There is nothing to go back to."

Carla, 25, who arrived with Anna in December, 1994, works part time and is studying public health at La Trobe University. She says she no longer belongs in East Timor. "We have come over here, finished school, moved into the community. If I go back there I will not fit in.

"If it's safe to go back there, why do we still have peacekeeping forces at the border 24 hours, seven days a week?"

Her sister, Leonarda, who arrived after them, says the future is too uncertain to return. "There's a lot of things people say. We don't know what's right. We are scared to go back. I am thinking of going back, maybe in 20 years, but not now. I am just too scared. Maybe Indonesia could come back any time."

The uncertainty of life in East Timor, of random violence and friends killed or disappeared, and the pressure not to speak of things you have witnessed, of being caught between the military and the guerrilla forces, has been replaced by the fear of what might be decided by Australia's immigration authorities.

The waiting has been too long, but now that the government has said it will move on applications for protection visas from the 1700 East Timorese who have sought sanctuary here, there is a new nervousness.

Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock said in March that they would have to demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution to be granted a visa. It is seen as a coded message that, now East Timor's political situation has stabilised, the asylum seekers will be returned.

All the remade lives of these asylum seekers may yet have to be remade once more.

"The Timor community feel it is unfair to be living in limbo for years in Australia with no answers and now for the government to say we will send you back. Some kids are born in Australia, they think they're Aussies but, in reality, in legality, they're not. That's a very harsh thing for them to know that," Carla Chung said.

"In the past there was a full denial of the Indonesian invasion and the human rights abuses from the Australian Government. I believe the government should be thinking of viewing it from the perspective of human rights. Seven years for me is a long time, but for some it is more than 10 years."