Aus wants to deport 104yr old

2005-03-08 11:48

Sydney - A 104-year-old Chinese woman will take her battle to stay in Australia directly to a cabinet minister after losing her appeal for a visa to remain in the country, her spokesperson said on Tuesday.

Cui Yu Hu will ask Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone to intervene in her case after the Migration Review Tribunal upheld the federal government's earlier decision to deny her an aged parent visa.

"We intend to appeal to the minister directly," Hu's spokesman, Chap Chow, said.

Chow said he was "quietly confident" that Hu would be allowed to stay in the country she has called home for the past decade.

"The whole world is watching this case now," he said.

Vanstone, who oversees the government's policy on asylum seekers, has previously said she wanted to show compassion to Hu.

But Chow told ABC radio that if the case had been handled with compassion from the beginning "all this wouldn't have happened."

A spokesperson for Vanstone said a request for a ministerial intervention would be given proper consideration.

Hu entered Australia on a year-long visitor visa in 1995 but no airline would risk taking her back to China because of her extreme age.

She has remained in the country on temporary "bridging visas" ever since and lives with the family of her adopted Japanese daughter in the southern city of Melbourne.

A spokesperson for Vanstone said the immigration department had to refuse Hu a visa as she had been living in Australia unlawfully because her visa had expired.

A permanent visa would have meant Hu could not be deported back to her hometown of Harbin in northeast China where she has no living relatives.

The case has drawn attention to the conservative government's tough stance on immigration, which includes the mandatory, unlimited detention of illegal immigrants, many of whom spend years in remote detention camps awaiting resolution of their cases.

China's deputy consul-general in Melbourne, Yue Ming Yang, said Beijing was very concerned about Hu's case. Sending the elderly woman back to Harbin would place her "at great risk," Yue said.

"We hope Madame Hu can get medical care and be treated as an Australian resident and get financial support because she is very old," Yue told ABC radio. "I do hope that she can get the right to stay here forever."

- AFP