An Irishman who lives in Australia with his wife and three children is facing deportation following a series of delays in his visa application process.
Dan Hall has urged Australian minister for home affairs Peter Dutton to intervene in his case and grant him permission to remain a resident of the country where he has lived for the past 10 years.
More than 3,239 people have signed a petition in support of Mr Hall, whose story was featured recently on The Project, a current affairs TV programme on Australia's Network Ten.
Mr Hall is now on a bridging visa which gives him a week to leave the country. He and his wife said it will be heartbreaking for their children, two of whom require special support, when he goes.
According to The Project, Mr Hall arrived in Australia in 2007 on a two year visitor visa. A short time later he met Virginia, the woman who would become his wife. After they married the couple moved to the Central Coast in New South Wales.
In 2009 Mr Hall applied for a permanent partner visa but it was refused in 2013 because their marriage certificate had been submitted late. He appealed this decision but says that a police check document was then lost in the mail and not received on time by the immigration department.
"It arrived here to our house on the July 15th, 2015," Mr Hall told The Project. "We put it in an envelope and posted it to the Department of Immigration. That piece of paper did not surface on my case officer's desk until November 15th, which is exactly five months later. But for that piece of paper I would now be a permanent resident because that was the last thing that they wanted."
Unless the minister, Mr Dutton, or the assistant minister intervenes, Mr Hall will have to leave Australia and then reapply for a visa, a process which could take up to 18 months. Mr Dutton has said it would not be in the public interest for him to intervene.
“It’s going to be heartbreaking for the kids. I can’t justify to my children that daddy’s getting sent away all over a piece of paper,” Ms Hall told The Project.
Mr Hall said he is not a criminal, just an ordinary dad. “How am I supposed to break it to my kids,” he said. “It’s not fair.”
