A 104-year-old Chinese woman faces deportation from Australia after a government tribunal yesterday rejected her final appeal for a permanent visa.
Cui Yu Hu arrived in Melbourne to visit family in 1995 on a 12-month tourist visa but no airline would take her back to China because she was too old and frail.
The widow -- who received a letter of congratulations from Prime Minister John Howard when she turned 104 earlier this year -- remained in Australia illegally for another four years before she applied for an aged parent visa that would allow her to stay permanently and receive free health care.
Hu's family -- adopted daughter Motoko Otani and son-in-law Bing Sen Yang -- appealed the decision. But the Migration Review Tribunal found yesterday that she was not entitled to a visa because she overstayed her initial 12-month visa.
However, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has said she would be willing to consider using her ministerial discretion to overrule the tribunal on humanitarian grounds if Hu's family made a formal application.
Hu's spokesman Chap Chow said her family was confident Vanstone would allow her to stay.
``We are hopeful. We are, in fact, quietly confident this will be the case, there will be [a positive] outcome,'' Chow told ABC radio.
Chow said Hu had outlived her friends in China and deportation would ``kill her.''
IDENTITY: A sex extortion scandal involving Thai monks has deeply shaken public trust in the clergy, with 11 monks implicated in financial misconduct Reverence for the saffron-robed Buddhist monkhood is deeply woven into Thai society, but a sex extortion scandal has besmirched the clergy and left the devout questioning their faith. Thai police this week arrested a woman accused of bedding at least 11 monks in breach of their vows of celibacy, before blackmailing them with thousands of secretly taken photos of their trysts. The monks are said to have paid nearly US$12 million, funneled out of their monasteries, funded by donations from laypeople hoping to increase their merit and prospects for reincarnation. The scandal provoked outrage over hypocrisy in the monkhood, concern that their status
The United States Federal Communications Commission said on Wednesday it plans to adopt rules to bar companies from connecting undersea submarine communication cables to the US that include Chinese technology or equipment. “We have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened in recent years by foreign adversaries, like China,” FCC Chair Brendan Carr said in a statement. “We are therefore taking action here to guard our submarine cables against foreign adversary ownership, and access as well as cyber and physical threats.” The United States has for years expressed concerns about China’s role in handling network traffic and the potential for espionage. The U.S. has
A disillusioned Japanese electorate feeling the economic pinch goes to the polls today, as a right-wing party promoting a “Japanese first” agenda gains popularity, with fears over foreigners becoming a major election issue. Birthed on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, spreading conspiracy theories about vaccinations and a cabal of global elites, the Sanseito Party has widened its appeal ahead of today’s upper house vote — railing against immigration and dragging rhetoric that was once confined to Japan’s political fringes into the mainstream. Polls show the party might only secure 10 to 15 of the 125 seats up for grabs, but it is
The US Department of Education on Tuesday said it opened a foreign funding investigation into the University of Michigan (UM) while alleging it found “inaccurate and incomplete disclosures” in a review of the university’s foreign reports, after two Chinese scientists linked to the school were separately charged with smuggling biological materials into the US. As part of the investigation, the department asked the university to share, within 30 days, tax records related to foreign funding, a list of foreign gifts, grants and contracts with any foreign source, and other documents, the department said in a statement and in a letter to
RSS