A hardworking, law-abiding South Australian family face being split and a mother threatened with deportation to Scotland as the Immigration Department refuses to budge over an innocent computer error.
The Grigg family of Adelaide fear being split by the ruling, with mum Kirsty, a Scottish national, told she must leave the country by April 9, leaving behind citizen husband Nick and their two teenage children, Stevie and Ben, in Australia.
With the department under fire over its management of freed criminal non-citizens – several of whom have reoffended since their release – the harsh treatment of this decent family looms as another immigration headache for the Albanese government.
The case has parallels with that of the Green family in Adelaide. Electrician Mark Green narrowly avoided deportation to Scotland last year after a visa bungle caused by a bankrupt former employer.
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Mr Grigg told The Australian his wife’s visa problems began last year due to an innocent computer error. He had been uploading information to the Immigration Department portal in support of a partner visa subclass 820 using a “save and close” form similar to a passport application.
Without his knowledge, the department’s IT system processed the application before it was complete and rejected it, but the rejection email went to his wife’s spam folder.
The first the Griggs knew of the rejection came inadvertently via Medicare, when they received a letter on December 23 saying Mrs Grigg, Stevie and Ben were no longer eligible for Medicare benefits on account of the Immigration Department ruling.
Since then the family have been locked in a bureaucratic hell trying to resolve the matter.
“After we got the Medicare letter we rang Immigration and were told that Kirsty’s application had been rejected and to check our emails,” Mr Grigg told The Australian. “We searched our emails, eventually finding the notice of rejection in her spam folder. We immediately appealed online that day, only to be told three weeks later by the AAT that we had missed the deadline by six days.”
Since then the family have employed a migration agent and Mr Grigg has also started a landscaping business to cover the costs of their ordeal.
While the family are confident their children will be able to stay through the “citizenship by descent” process, the Immigration Department is so far refusing to budge on Mrs Grigg’s case, meaning she must leave Australia alone, or the family must pull their children out of high school so they can all leave together.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/family-fear-as-mum-faces-deport...She is white and a native English speaker, that's the problem. If they were all illegal boat arrivals from Bangladesh the pink-haired brigade would be marching on the streets for them.
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