Legal Eagle has picked up on the case of Andrew Moore:
Andrew Moore was born in Scotland, but arrived in Australia at the age of 11. Over thirty years later, the Minister for Immigration revoked Moore’s visa on the basis of his criminal record. Moore had become involved with the law since the age of 14, and had been convicted of manslaughter after he stabbed a drinking buddy in a drunken brawl in 2000. Thereafter, Moore was held in immigration detention for an extended period while the Minister for Immigration assessed his status. He escaped detention in May this year, later turning himself in. He had problems with alcoholism, as well as liver damage, Hepatitis C and other health problems. His extended family still live in Australia, including his 15-year-old son.
On 20 October this year, Moore was flown back to the UK and released with money, medication and a hotel booking for a month at Heathrow Airport. On 23 October, Moore was discovered seriously injured in London and was pronounced dead after arriving at hospital. The cause of death is still not known, and an autopsy was inconclusive.
Moore is not the first person to be deported from Australia in such circumstances, as discussed at length in Legal Eagle’s post.
I concur with Ms. Eagle that whatever crimes people like Moore commit, they are de facto Australians and as such are our responsibility.
“they are de facto Australians and as such are our responsibility.”
I agree. I’m also loated to think what will happen if a Liberal Govt decides one day to re-introduce temporary protection visas.
I can think of no worse punishment for someone that has fleed a life of persecution to be sent back again after the Govt decides that the danger has passed.
In the interim these people have built new lives here in Australia.
It’s unAustralian to force them out.
I meant “loathed”
If he was an Australian Citizen he couldn’t have been deported. If he hadn’t committed so many crimes he wouldn’t have been sent home.
It isn’t that difficult to get citizenship once eligible.
I dunno. I reckon you meant ‘loth’, though I’ll grant you the ‘a’ if you insist.
*Nods*
NO NO NO NO NO.
Isn’t it ironic that we’re now deporting the convicts?!
PC – you’re right of course.
I was seized by a fit of generosity, but I’m okay now.
Could Andrew Moore ever have become an Australian citizen? Generally children can’t apply for citizenship, their father gets citizenship then they make their mind up at age 18 or 21. Andrew Moore’s difficulties with the law started when he was 14.
Its a shock to discover you aren’t the Australian you thought you were but generally the ramifications aren’t as drastic as they were in Andrew Moore’s case.
The immigration bar is becoming ridiculously difficult when the department didn’t keep accurate records in the first place. For example migrants who have to prove their identity by reference to microfiched passenger lists that recorded them as “male aged 2 years” etc
billie – at Age 18 he could have applied before he had an adult record and then continued on his merry way making Australia a better place to live.
Razor, where did you read that he knew he was not Australian and did not bother to apply? For all you know he may have had no idea until he got in trouble with the law and found out then, when it was too late to apply.
I was wondering if you read the SMH article? He was very very ill it seems. You don’t feel slightly disturbed that it all ended this way? It’s not like he’s alive now is it?
Pesumably Mr Moore was accompanied to Britain by a person or some persons authorised under the Act to effect his deportation from an Australian jurisdiction.
1. Did Mr Moore have the appropriate documentation for entry to the UK?
2. Did any persons authorised under Australian legislation have UK visas which entitled them to perform any functions that they may have been authorised to perform under Australian legislation?
DC @ 6 – yes, had the same thought myself.
Katz @ 11 – I’m presuming because Moore was still technically a Brit he was entitled to enter as of right. This is what the SMH article said about the manner of his return:
So it appears that he did have “minders” on the plane, but I guess the minders didn’t get off into UK territory – certainly, once he got to the UK, he seems to have been on his own.
I think the UK is pretty annoyed by the whole thing (as you would be). To people who think we’re entitled to behave like this – how would you feel if some random person who happened to have spent the first two years of their life in Australia was dumped in our territory after committing serious crimes? Particularly if that person did not really have any contacts in Australia, and hadn’t been there for 30 years.
As I’ve said over at my place, the previous law was that if a non-citizen committed a serious crime and had spent less than 10 years in Australia, then they could be deported. At least if the person has been here less than 10 years, they probably still have some kind of connection with their place of origin.
He was Australian, he just hadn’t done the paperwork, and yet this sick man was deported to a country he did not know, forcibly separated from his own son and the rest of his family. One minute we’re giving apologies for Forgotten Australians and the Stolen Generation, and the next we’re dumping undesirables in foreign gutters. Will the Derryn Hinches and the immigration bureaucrats lose a moment’s sleep over their role in this man’s pathetic end? I doubt it.
I am an Australian and one of my children was born in Papua New Guinea in 1975. Because his father is from PNG, the PNG constitution did not allow him to have another citizenship but PNG. So he had PNG citizenship even though he lived in Australia from the age of three years.
It was only after he turned 18 that he was free to choose to apply for Australian citizenship. If he had been in trouble with the law and imprisoned he could have faced the same deportation as Moore faced.
One of his cousins was in a similar situation, got into trouble with drug related offences, and Ruddock tried to deport him. Here is his story as told by his mother: http://www.deakin.edu.au/hmnbs/psychology/research/ease/2007%20Conference/files/henwood-paper.pdf
My view is that if a person grows up in Australia, and is a product of Australian society, then Australia should not be deporting them back to countries where they have no recent lived experience.
This type of deportation happens a lot. It’s very low the way we think we can export our problems to another country on a technicality.
How’d Australia look if the guy, in his utter despair, had taken someone with him as well. Some community placement programme we got there.
We deport people who have served over 1 year in gaol. Most of them are not murderers, either.
Nana Levu, that is a very moving story. I hope that the cousin got everything sorted out.
Legal Eagle. Sorted out re deportation threat, but the saga continues in other ways.
I work on prisoner/ex-offender employment policy issues. That remains a significant stumbling block for the overwhelming majority of ex-prisoners and ex-offenders.
As well as the issue of compassion, I think it’s wrong that we dump our problems onto another country.
All easily avoided by simply not breaking the law, you know, like the rest of us don’t.
Australia should do more of this, and publicise it. Might make other non-citizens think twice if a crime spree has the result of sending them home.
Next step is to revoke the citizenship of naturalised recidivists, & repatriate them also.
And yet these people chose not to become citizens and chose to repeatedly commit serious crimes that hurt other people, all while knowing what the likely consequences would be (the grounds for deportation on character grounds are generally a string of crimes, not just a single one). Whatever happened to personal responsibility?
Seeing people as victims denies their agency, and once agency is admitted we have to let them have some responsibility for it. And you don’t get to have the rights of citizenship without also having the duties.
dd – personal responsibility just doesn’t cut it on this forum. Get with the program – the Governemnt is responsible for everything.
“Next step is to revoke the citizenship of naturalised recidivists, & repatriate them also.”
Yes, and let’s make it retrospectiv for the last 5 generations and deport all crims back to their home country.
Speaking of ‘personal repsonsibility’, don’t you think Australia has a responsibility not to off-load people to other countries when they’ve spent the bulk of their life here? The problem was created here, so why should another country have to clean up the mess?
Nope – either you are a Citizen or you are not. (and I don’ think you should be allowed dual citizenship either.)
5 generations is going too far, but we’d clean up a lot by repatriation of those who arrive, then embark on a criminal career. Australia has enough home grown criminals, without importing more.
Don’t want to be shipped home? It is dead easy to stay, just don’t-commit-crime.
Australia’s obligation is to the victims of crime, NOT to recidivist criminals.
My bleeding heart quota is reserved for those who deserve it. I have more productive things to do with my time than waste it advocating for foreigners who can’t be bothered to obey the law.
See this is the interesting bit SATP. If we deport our non-citizen criminals back to “home”, what’s to stop every other country with Australian-born crooks in their jails deporting their for-all-purposes-native recidivists back to us?
I can quite imagine the reaction of DIAC when presented with the NESB but Australian passport-holding lower strata of, say, a Lebanese or British prison.
Nothing is to stop them Liam. They should be doing it right now. If they aren’t, then more fool them. After they have finished their sentence of course.
After the shock of discovering just HOW MANY of our citizens lived in Lebanon (at the time of civil emergency/war/whatever it was a couple of years ago), my inner anthropologist is busting to know how many non-English speaking Australian Born of Australian parents are inhabiting the lower strata of Lebanese prisons.
Australia doesn’t have much choice but to accept it’s own back.
DD, I think at least some of these people chose to commit crimes when they were young and had no idea that they might be deported as a result. That being said, I’m not saying that they are deserving people or anything like that. If you look at Nystrom (mentioned in my post), he seems to have been a particularly unpleasant person. But he had lived all of his life (except for his first 25 days) in Australia and thought he was Australian.
I think having a 10 year cut off rule is fair (as per s 501 of the Migration Act). So if the person has lived in Australia less than 10 years their visa can be cancelled and they can be deported. That gives authorities plenty of time to act if someone is a “bad egg”.
Steve, given you support these measures, I’m glad that you are consistent and think there should be a quid pro quo kind of arrangement (we get “our” naughty citizens back, no matter how small a time they lived in Australia).
Part of the issue is that the deportee has already served a gaol sentence (or in fact, usually many sentences), but they are effectively being punished further by deportation. Is it fair to punish them further in this way? And is it fair to punish their families?
In my experience LE, the persistent recidivist young in Australia are at some point in their criminal career advised by their solicitor, such advice being very specific about what will happen to them if they persist with crime. Most of them understand the consequences very well, and are made well aware that the petty juvenile punishments/wrist slap they get will be upgraded once they are of majority age.
One would presume that solicitors would also advise that non-citizens who receive criminal convictions are liable to be deported after sentence.
If I’ve known this all my life, solicitors sure know it. The free/assigned solicitor to juvenile offenders may be of varying quality, but in my experience their advice as to future consequences is reliable.
Most (if not all) career criminals, regardless of age, are well aware of the machinations of the justice system, and the penalties that apply.
I do not readily accept that any of these deported sob-stories were unaware they stood to be deported.
Steve @28- if these folks did know the risks they were facing – why didn’t they sign up for citizenship, you’d think it was easy enough. However, from my reading of these cases, they generally involve a pretty damaged individual; mental illness, addiction and severe social dysfunction. In my experience (25 yesrs in community services)such folks aren’t capable of functioning in our society. The chances are that they wouldn’t even remember to tell their lawyer that they were born elsewhere. The erratic nature of their lives means that they focus more on the next meal, fix, etc than anything as distant as the consequences of their non- citizenship.
Sure they may have done despicable things, but should we? Because supporting the govt in deporting someone who has lived here all their conscious life, with serious health problems and with children and family left behind is a despicable act. These folks have done their time;why do we then extend the punishment? The Minister can exercise his discretion to intervene, and so he should. Our justice system is not based on an eye for an eye, but on justice and mercy. And Steve, the mark of a civilised nation is the exercise of mercy when the circumstances warrant it; it is a character test of the polity, not the person.
Robert Merkel said:
The concept of “de facto Australian”, as opposed to the old-fashioned “de jure Australian”, is a new one in international law and diplomacy. There is no squishy, nebulous “de facto” citizenship or else anyone who managed to string a few visas together could be granted citizenship, a recipe for rorters.
Citizenship is a right by native birth or a privilege earned by the adoptive and granted by the state. If someone is a legal resident and attains their majority then they can apply for citizenship like anyone else. If they dont bother to apply to become citizens, or fail the citizenship tests (which include criminal records check) then I dont see why the long-suffering AUS tax-payer should be forced to put up with them.
The country is already packed to the rafters as it is without letting all the rif-raff in to stay. Send the chronic offenders back from whence they came and good riddance.
Angela@#29 Dec 9th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Deporting someone still gives them, and their kin, the freedom to interact in another country. Its obviously not as bad as imprisoning someone here. Yet we imprison people in the same situation all the time. Thats not “a despicable act”. Thats the law.
Actions have consequences, its not “our responsibility” to make pick up the pieces all the time. Its the responsibility of the person to make sure they don’t fall to pieces in the first place.
Angela@#29 Dec 9th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Our justice system is based on neither “eye for an eye” or “mercy”, it is based on the accountability of (agency) institutional authority to (principal) individual autonomies.
Revoking residential status is not a “punishment” since foreigners do not have this as a right. It is a withdrawal of privilege based on failure to comply with regulations. If the Minister is continually “exercising his discretion to intervene” on behalf of bleeding heart liberals then the law becomes a dead letter to be mocked by institutional authorities and flouted by individual autonomies.
More generally, liberals don’t get that the political landscape has changed dramatically since the great real estate boom over the past generation. People have much lower tolerance of crime due to the fantastic value of property. The phrase “there goes the neighborhood” now has a much more ominous financial ring. Add the problems that dysfunctional children pose to high-fee charging (or expensive district to locate in) schools and one has a recipe for conservatism.