Despite having done nothing wrong, a dejected Scottish family is being expelled from Australia after ten years due to a painful immigration dispute.
Electrical expert Mark Green, 44, together with his wife Kelly, 45, and daughter Rebecca, 19, were flown to Australia in 2012 after being headhunted for his expertise in solar installation.
Due to the hefty $35,000 cost of airfare and quarantine costs, moving to the UK will cost them $60,000 and require them to leave behind their cherished companion dog Maisie.
Although the Greens have already spent more than $150,000 on immigration attorneys, visa, and residence applications, they are unable to reapply until they leave the country.
‘We sold it all to come out here and then we started again,’ Mr Green told Daily Mail Australia.
‘And now we’re having to sell it all, to go back to Scotland, to try and apply to come back again, to restart again. For the third time.
‘I’m nearly 50. We can’t go through this anymore. There’s nothing for us back in Scotland now.’
“This is where I reside,” he continued. My heart is here, in this. It won’t ever alter. Even if I return to Scotland, here is where I shall consider to be my home.
Since the family’s arrival, they have had to pay for everything that Australians take for granted in addition to paying their taxes because they are on a sponsored work visa.
They claim they paid without complaining despite being refused access to Medicare and Rebecca’s free public state schooling, which costs them $8,000 a year.
Electrical expert Mark Green, 44, was flown to Australia in 2012 with his wife Kelly, 45, and daughter Rebecca, 19, after being headhunted for his expertise in solar installation.
“Coming here was the happiest day of our life,” we said. The nicest day ever,” said Kelly, 45, who is from Kilbirnie, which is located 40 kilometers south-west of Glasgow.
They just need their bridging visa to be converted from an E-type to a C-type at this time in order to apply to stay without leaving Australia since they wish to stay there permanently.
Businesses that sponsored Mark as an employee and started the three-year procedure for residence but went out of business before it was finished have destroyed the family.
‘The company went into liquidation and which means I have to start again, all three years, all over again,’ said Mr Green, originally from Prestwick, Ayrshire.
‘That’s happened seven times to me. Most of them closed because of warranty issues – they don’t want to guarantee the warranty of the product.
‘It ends up costing them money, so what they do is they shut up shop and they open up under another business name.’
The family’s move to the UK will cost them $60,000, and due to exorbitant $35,000 airfares and quarantine costs, they will have to leave their cherished pet dog Maisie (shown with mother Kelly, left, and daughter Rebecca) behind.
One employer’s admission that he had mistakenly submitted an application for the Greens’ residence and paid their costs, resulting in their unintentional overstay of their working visa, was the last straw.
After being prevented from working in Australia for years due to the visa restrictions, their son Jamie has already traveled home to Scotland.
The family has been attempting to remain in the nation for a year, but time is now running out, so they have been forced to sell everything before being deported the next week.
When Mr. Green returns to Scotland after a decade in Australia, he won’t even be allowed to work in his field because his UK electrical credentials are no longer valid.
The final straw came after one employer told Mark Green he’d applied for their residency and paid their fees – but hadn’t, causing them to unwittingly overstay their working visa
He has nothing in Scotland and nowhere to live, with his elderly parents unable to cope with the family joining them while they wait for their visa to be approved.
‘Everything I hoped for here is gone,’ said Mr Green.
‘The stress is terrible. Absolutely terrible. It’s not fair. Not fair at all.
‘Nobody has been in contact with me about trying to sort this out. All they say to me is I have to leave the country.
‘My mum and dad are nearly 80 – as much as they would love to see us, they don’t want a family staying with them. It could take up to two years.
‘I thought I’d have my own company and my own home by now but instead our life is in turmoil.’
Their case has now been taken up by Adelaide politician Frank Pangallo, who compared them to the Tamilese Murugappan family from Bilgoela in Queensland, who had their visa conditions changed to let them stay despite arriving by boat.
‘They didn’t do it legally, unlike the Greens, and they got preferential treatment,’ Mr Pangallo, of South Australia’s Best Party told Daily Mail Australia.
‘Forcing a family to leave a country they’ve called home for 10 years simply to return to their country of origin to re-apply to return to Oz seems pointless and ridiculous.
‘And this is all happening while governments grapple with changes to the country’s skilled migration program due to massive shortages across the country.’
A plea to the previous Liberal immigration minister Alex Hawke was rejected and fresh appeal to the new Labor immigration minister Andrew Giles has fallen on deaf ears.
Mr Pangallo added: ‘If you want skilled migrants to come into this country, you had better give them an undertaking so they’ll be able to stay here and not be booted out when it suits you.
‘It’s absolutely disgusting.’
A spokesman for Mr Giles insisted the immigration minister never commented on individual cases, despite commenting extensively on the Biloela case