As a Christian living in Syria, Sandra Azrak says she had no choice but to flee.
"We were not welcomed in our country. As a Christan, we were threatened. We were forced to leave our country, there was no choice."
She, along with her husband, mother-in-law and sister in-law, have recently arrived in Sydney.
The Assyrian Christian family have been granted humanitarian visas.
Carman Laza is the Manager at the Assyrian Resource Centre in Sydney's Western suburb of Fairfield.
She says the majority of the people who visit the centre are refugees, who've fled their homeland because of their religion.
"They were told because you're Christian you're not allowed in to your own home country. So because of that reason, They had to flee their home country."
Christians have claimed their largest share of Australia's humanitarian visa grants in a decade.
New figures sourced from documents released under the Freedom of Information act show the proportion of Christians has grown to 71 per cent since July last year.
Just one in five - or 19 per cent - of humanitarian visa grant recipients marked Islamic faiths on their applications during the same period..
That figure is down from 30 per cent in year to July 2016, and from nearly 40 per cent the previous year.
Ms Laza says for Christians in Muslim-majority countries, like Syria and Iraq, the situation is getting worse.
And she says the situation isn't much better when they flee to neighbouring countries like Jordan and Lebanon,
" They have no rights at all to do anything for their own lives. Especially financial assistance. And in the neighbouring countries, majority of them are not allowed to work. "
Dr Lucy Fiske is a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow & Senior Lecturer at University of Technology Sydney.
Much of her research has focused on refugees and asylum seekers and she says she's concerned by the latest figures.
"It's diffucult to draw too much from the numbers alone. The numbers certainly raise a flag that we need to ask questions about how these determinations are being made."
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says the government is concentrating on 'persecuted minorities.'
A statement provided by his spokesperson, said 'There will be a lot of Christians who come under the programme, but ultimately we want to make sure that we're bringing the right people; people who can integrate into our community.'
But Dr Fiske says persecution affects both minority and majority groups.
"The government should be taking people who are most in need of urgent resettlement. They will be the people facing the greatest immediate danger of persecution whether they are from a minority or majority group. It really needs to be a non-discriminatory process."
