Scottish Green family facing deportation from Australia win battle to stay

Australia
By William

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Hard-working Scottish family wins fight to stay in Australia after facing deportation despite paying taxes in Australia for over ten years

  • The Green family can apply for residency
  • They moved for work in February 2012

By Ashley Nickel for Daily Mail Australia

Published: | Updated:

A Scottish family living in Australia for over 10 years has finally won their long battle to stay in Australia.

The Green family was granted permission to remain in Australia while applying for permanent residence after a nearly year-long legal battle that cost more than $150,000.

Mark Green, 44, his wife Kelly, 45, their son Jamie and daughter Rebecca moved to Australia from Scotland in February 2012, when Mr Green was wanted for his specialist skills installing solar panels in Adelaide. .

However, in May 2014, Mr. Green was forced to change jobs after the solar company he worked for went bankrupt, putting his visa in jeopardy just a year before he qualified for residency. .

The Greens family has been granted permission to apply for permanent residence (pictured, Mark Green, 44, wife Kelly, 45, and daughter Rebecca, 19)

The family was desperate to stay in Australia, but seven other employers let them down and pulled out before their visa paperwork could be completed.

A former boss had promised Mr Green that he had paid the family’s citizenship application fees only for the Scottish family to discover that he had falsified the documents.

Green’s son, Jamie, had to fly back to his old home in Ayrshire in 2015 after the family’s visa problems prevented him from working in Australia.

In June 2022, the Greens made a public appeal to the newly elected Labor government for help after seeing the Tamil asylum-seeking Murugappan family allowed to stay in Biloela, regional Queensland.

They said they had given up their whole life in Scotland to build a house in Australia and sold everything they had.

Mr Green’s UK electrical certification had also expired since he moved to Australia, meaning he would face unemployment if forced to return.

Mark Green (pictured with his wife Kelly) moved his family to Adelaide in 2012 after he was sought out by a solar panel company.

Mark Green (pictured with his wife Kelly) moved his family to Adelaide in 2012 after he was sought out by a solar panel company.

The family was scheduled to be deported and a flight to the UK was booked at 10:20pm on 10 August 2022, but they were granted a last-minute reprieve by Immigration Minister Andrew Giles.

Barely a year after their public appeal, the Greens finally received approval to apply for permanent residence.

Mr. Green said 2GB‘s Ben Fordham: ‘The Minister has given us a 600 visitor visa which allows us to apply within the country.’

He said his family has spent more than $150,000 on visa applications and immigration lawyers during the battle to stay Down Under.

CHRONOGRAM OF THE SITUATION OF THE GREENS

February 2012 – Mark Green is wanted for his specialist solar installation skills to take his family from Ayrshire, 40km southwest of Glasgow in Scotland, to a new life in Adelaide, South Australia, 16,000km away.

May 2014 – Mark has to change jobs, just a year away from qualifying for residency after the company shuts down.

August 2014 – History repeats itself and Mark has to find another new employer. The family is paying for all of their medical care since they don’t qualify for Medicare on their visa and also $8,000 a year for their daughter Rebecca’s education at the local public state school.

August 2015 – Mark has to find another new company. His son Jamie had to fly back to Scotland because he couldn’t work in Australia under the terms of the work visa and residency is at least three years away again.

April 2021 – The Green family discovers that the residency application that Mark’s boss promised them was false, without their knowledge. As a result, their visa conditions were breached, meaning they had to leave the country to reapply. They start working to try to overturn the decision and get the visa reverted to the type that would allow them to stay in Australia while they apply. As the application drags on, they realize they will be kicked out of the country and start selling their prized possessions.

June 2022 – They make their first public appeal to the government for clemency, as friends and colleagues plead for an intervention in the same way that the new Labor government saved the Biloela family and allowed them to stay in the country. The family has already spent $150,000 on visa applications and immigration attorneys.

July 2022 – Daily Mail Australia reveals their desperate situation and the story goes global, making headlines in the UK and on British TV.

August 10, 2022 – The family is due to be deported and has a 22:20 flight booked from Adelaide back to the UK, but they have no idea where they will live or work. After local MP Frank Pangallo puts them in touch with a new immigration lawyer, they are convinced to stay and fight at 3:30 p.m. At 7 p.m., just when they should have checked in for their flight, they get a call South Australian Prime Minister Peter Malinauskas telling them they have been granted a reprieve. He persuaded Labor’s immigration minister, Andrew Giles, to give them an extra month to submit their paperwork to stay in the country.

August 22, 2022 – The family has 24 hours to complete some 240 pages of visa paperwork that requires all the travel details of the last three decades, but they are hampered by returning their old passports with details of visas and international movements when they were renewed in early this year.

August 29, 2022 – The minister wants the complete finalized file of the family’s visa application to make his decision.

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