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104-year old loses deportation appeal

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.''
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