A woman who has spent half her life in Australia has desperately pleaded with the Immigration Minister to allow her to stay.
Maria Duminica, 20, first arrived in Australia from Romania with her mother and stepfather, who is an Australian citizen.
He traveled on a tourist visa to Sydney, where his mother and stepfather married a few months later.
Ms Duminica’s mother applied for a partner visa with her daughter as a secondary applicant.
The couple were assigned a series of temporary bridging visas while they waited for the permanent visa to be approved.
Maria Duminica, 20, first arrived in Australia from Romania with her mother and stepfather, who is an Australian citizen.
Duminica said he still clearly remembers arriving in Sydney when he was 10 and going straight to Bondi Beach on a hot summer day.
“I would walk down the street and people would smile at you, it was very nice,” he said. 9NEWS.
But as a teenager, things were not so happy and Duminica’s relationship with her mother and stepfather deteriorated.
Duminica said she wanted to leave home when she was 13, but she waited until she was 16 and left for good.
He stayed with friends for a while before moving into temporary crisis accommodation.
Stepping Stone House, in Dulwich Hill, in Sydney’s inner west, took Duminica in and gave her a safe place to live.
Mrs Duminica continued studying at secondary school while living in the shelter, traveling more than an hour each way from Dulwich Hill to Rose Bay.
He said he always grew up with the mentality that he had to finish school, but his world was rocked by “scary” news while he was doing his HSC tests.
A few weeks before her 18th birthday, Ms Duminica was told her bridging visa had been canceled for a month.
Duminica said she was scared and shocked because her entire future in Australia was in doubt and she didn’t know what she could do about it.
Her mother, who was still awaiting approval of her partner visa some seven years later, had removed her daughter’s name from her dependent application.
Mrs. Duminica She said she was scared and shocked because her entire future in Australia was in doubt and she didn’t know what she could do about it.
With limited options, his lawyer at the time applied for a protection visa, which was denied in 2022.
An attempt to appeal the decision to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal was also unsuccessful, but the tribunal member who oversaw Ms Duminica’s appeal decided she could meet the special circumstances required for ministerial intervention.
Her case reached Immigration Minister Andrew Giles’ office in June last year, but she is still waiting to hear if he will allow her to stay in Australia permanently.
Duminica said that living month to month with the threat of being deported was exhausting and explained that she does not feel that Romania is her country of origin.
‘I don’t know anyone in Romania and I don’t know how to speak the language. “I have no connection there,” she said.
‘If I have to go back, I will be a young woman on the street. I’ll be homeless.’
After finishing school, Duminica got a job in a Sydney hotel and moved out independently.
but ma’am Duminica said his future still seemed precarious.
They gave him work rights but he did not have permission to study.
She would also like to have a car or a place to live, but fears that “the money will be lost” if she is deported.
Almost 10,000 people have signed an online petition started by Stepping Stone House, calling on the minister to grant Duminica permanent residency.
Jason Juretic, chief executive of Stepping Stone House, described Ms Duminica as a “genuinely outstanding” young woman who had shown grit and determination to earn A’s and A’s in eight school subjects while working part-time at two flower shops.
Juretic said it was clear the minister needed to intervene because Duminica does not have a support system in her home country, where young women are very vulnerable to human trafficking.
Duminica’s immigration lawyer, Sally Jackson, said her client’s case was unusual and she wants to draw the minister’s attention to it.
A spokesman for Giles said the minister’s office was investigating Duminica’s case.