A British grandmother facing deportation back to the UK has just five days left on her visa and is ‘losing it’ with anxiety at the prospect of being forcibly dragged from her home.
Mary Ellis faces the prospect of being arrested, placed in immigration detention and sent back to a country she hasn’t visited in more than three decades.
The 74-year-old’s latest bridging visa expires on March 21 and the ‘E’ visas being issued to Mary have been getting shorter and shorter, now down to just four weeks.
Migration agent Stan Shneider, who has been helping her pro bono, said Mary, who has lived in Australia for 43 years, was ‘a sick old lady’ who was ‘very confused, upset and starting to lose it’.
Shneider has appealed to Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Minister Andrew Giles and now wonders if he is even aware of Mary’s case.
Grandmother Mary Ellis, 74, has suffered a deterioration in her health as her latest visa is days from expiring and she faces the prospect of immigration detention and deportation
Mary came to Australia in the 1980s, but because she was out of the country for a period of time where she could qualify for ‘absorbed person’ status, she is threatened with deportation
“I think he’s decent, honest and hard-working, but he’s surrounded by 200 employees and they’re just following the rules,” Mr. Shneider said.
‘Under the Migration Act there is a trigger to revive the minister’s power to intervene, but I don’t think anyone has tested that – ever.’
Shneider also compared the situation of Mary – who had worked, paid taxes and volunteered for charity – to criminally convicted asylum seekers who had been released from immigration detention under a High Court ruling.
Many Australians support Mary, saying she had contributed to the country, while urging Mr Giles to help her.
People have also criticized the Albanian government for allowing ‘criminals’ to stay in Australia, telling it to ‘have a heart’ and ‘leave Mary alone’.
One woman wrote online: ‘For God’s sake this is outrage, she deserves to stay. The Immigration Minister needs to sort this out! Surely common decency on the minister’s behalf should be automatically conceded! What on earth does the Immigration Service do when we don’t deport people who should be jailed and deport a good scout who hasn’t done anything wrong in the 40 years she’s lived here!!!’
One male poster wrote: ‘If this law abiding lady is deported this country will become a laughing stock to all morally thinking, lateral thinking, mature and fair thinking people across the globe.’
Another woman said: ‘So many illegal immigrants being allowed into Australia who have broken our laws and are still here and they want to deport a grandmother who has lived here for over 40 years.’
Online support for Mary is growing, as is Facebook criticism of the minister and the Albanian government’s immigration policy
Mary’s case has sparked online criticism of the immigration minister and the Albanian government for allowing criminal detainees but trying to lock up and expel a ‘law-abiding grandmother’
Mary Ellis is feeling anxious as his latest visa expires and threats from immigration officials hit home, such as this letter (right) that says she could face “serious consequences”
In contrast to Mr Giles easing restrictions on convicted former detained asylum seekers, Mary has received a threatening letter from the Department of Home Affairs that leaves her in no doubt of an official intention to deport her.
The letter, with words underlined for emphasis, says “you could face serious consequences, including immigration detention and removal from Australia”.
This means that unless Mr. Giles intervenes and Mary is unwilling to go, she could be arrested by the police and taken in handcuffs to an immigration center for deportation.
As Mr Schneider examines the very few options available under the Migration Act, parts of which he describes as a ‘shattering piece of legislation’, Mary’s health deteriorates.
Mary went on television last month pleading with the Department of Home Affairs to let her stay in Australia after she was threatened with deportation over claims she had misrepresented her permanent residence in the country since arriving from the UK.
She said Home Affairs’ claims that she left Australia three times under an alias between 1983 and 1986 were untrue, as were claims that her late husband Martin Ellis was really a man called Trevor Warren.
By her own account, Mary first arrived in Australia in December 1981 following a divorce and began a relationship with Mr Ellis.
To qualify as an ‘absorbed person’ under Australia’s migration law, Mary Ellis would only be eligible if she was in Australia from 2 April 1984 and had not left the country since.
Mary said she had never returned to Britain once since arriving in 1981 and was ‘terrified’ of going back to Britain as she ‘didn’t know a soul’ there, declaring ‘I’ m an Aussie’.
Mary Ellis (above) loves Australia and wants to stay, and with online support mounting, it seems many Australians believe she deserves it after decades of working and paying taxes here
The tide of opinion in Facebook discussions about Mary Ellis’s case is completely behind her and against the government’s immigration laws
Mary’s daughter Angela (above) said her mother returned home in 1986, but on Facebook people didn’t seem to care about the details, just that Mary was the kind of person Australia should allow to stay in this country
She said she had paid tax in Australia and had a Medicare card, a pension card and an Australian driver’s licence.
But a MailOnline investigation poked holes in her story, revealing Mary’s daughter in the UK who said her mother had returned to the UK, albeit 34 years ago.
MailOnline used genealogy to track down Mary’s ten siblings living in the UK and her estranged daughter Angela, who effectively torpedoed Mary’s claims, saying her mother had flown to the UK in 1986 to sell her house in Croydon, Surrey.
It also found Mary’s Facebook page, which revealed she was in contact with the majority of her siblings, all of whom lived in the UK, despite Mary saying they lived in other countries around the world.
Shneider told Daily Mail Australia that he still believed Mary’s story that she had never left Australia and that the part of the Migration Act which gives the minister the power to intervene was at best narrow or at worst kind of Catch 22.
Home Affairs told Daily Mail Australia that Minister Giles’ personal intervention powers were only revived under certain sections of the Migration Act, which are when a person is refused a visa or an appeals court refuses to intervene.
But Mr Shneider responded to this saying, saying that Mary Ellis had not applied for an absorbed person visa – because under the Migration Act no one can, it’s just a status that is obtained if you qualify – and therefore was she has not been refused a visa.
Migration agent Stan Shneider has strongly backed Ms Ellis, saying the Migration Act gives the minister only narrow opportunities to intervene, but he is giving it a go
Furthermore, if Mary has not been refused a visa, she cannot apply to a tribunal such as the AAT for a review of that refusal.
“Notwithstanding this, I am in the process of applying to the AAT with a request that it dismiss the application expeditiously,” he said. “I do so in the hope that it will be enough to trigger the minister’s right to intervene.
‘Mary denies that she is here illegally and I tend to agree with her. It is very well for the Department to claim that she is an illegal immigrant, but despite numerous requests from me over the years for the Department to produce its so-called proof, it has never done so.
“I suppose it never has because it can’t.”