After building a life here for more than a decade, Reyna Nangan dreams that her family – especially her eight-year-old daughter Kaia – will call Australia home.
“Kaia had a lot of opportunities here in Australia,” Reyna told SBS News. ‘She did very well.
“That’s the one thing I don’t want to take away from her, that opportunity…I know she can be something someday.”
Reyna and her partner, Karin Yechoku, from the Philippines and Thailand, have lived in Australia for over fourteen years. They own a restaurant in Toowoomba, where their daughter was born and spent her entire life.
Now they are at risk of deportation.
‘It’s not Australia that doesn’t want you’
Reyna said their bid for permanent residency failed after a previous employer failed to follow through on a visa application, leaving them in a bureaucratic no man’s land.
“I’ve often asked myself, why? Why am I here if Australia doesn’t want me?” she said.
“But then… I correct myself: ‘It’s not Australia that doesn’t want you, okay? It’s just the system… and especially not the people in Australia who [don’t] wants you. They love you. ”
The family’s request for ministerial intervention was rejected at the end of last year, when it turned out that it was not a substantive matter of public interest.
While the Home Office said it cannot comment on individual cases for privacy reasons, a spokesperson said in a statement that “Visa applicants remain legally responsible for meeting visa criteria even if they suffer disadvantage as a result of employer misconduct, negligence or failure.”
The minister does not generally intervene to ‘resolve’ individual visa results except in very limited, exceptional circumstances, the spokesperson said.
However, Reyna has not given up and has submitted a second request to the Minister of Immigration for consideration. The family has been approved for a bridging visa pending a decision.
“I’m the one in the family who keeps this fight going,” she said.
‘They are so kind to us’
Reyna and her family are not alone in the struggle; community members greet them at their restaurant with a smile and a hug and tell them they support them.
Nearly 4,000 people signed a petition calling on the immigration minister to intervene in the case and allow the family to remain in Australia
Dale Hockey, a longtime customer of their restaurant, said he was “heartbroken” when he heard about the family’s visa situation.
“It broke my heart, it really did. They are so kind to us… I will do everything I can for them,” he told SBS News.
“They’ve always been the genuine people that they’ve been…They treat you like family, and I feel like they’re family.”
Toowoomba has a diverse community, according to the latest census, with around 14 per cent of residents here born abroad, and many are proud of the area’s rich mix of cultures.
Jane Schuller, another customer of the family’s restaurant, said the family “deserves to be Australian”.
“To me they are what Australia wants… These are good-hearted, honest, hard-working people and I know they have worked all the time since they have been here,” she told SBS News.
‘Finally called home’
Garth Hamilton, Groom’s local federal MP, has also joined the call for the family to stay.
“The number of people in my community who have reached out and said, ‘We have to do something about this, this can’t be right.’ It has happened across the board, from some of our most prominent business people to people who pass me on the street,” he told SBS News.
“I’m going to stay as optimistic as possible all the way through, and I think that’s what they need around them.
“Everyone in this situation needs people who will consider no other option than to stay and continue to contribute, to be part of our community.”
Hamilton said his team is dealing with internal affairs and they are “working through it.”
Despite the anxious wait, Reyna is overwhelmed by the support she has received.
“I am grateful to all of them… We are far away from our families, but God make sure we have families here too,” she said.
She also has a message for Home Secretary Tony Burke.
“We are a family that only wanted what was right for our child,” she said.
“We just want Australia to finally be called our home, [so] that we don’t have to keep thinking about our visa.”
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