Foreign criminals seeking to avoid deportation to Nauru makes mockery of human rights law

Expect all sorts of excuses from the foreign criminals Australia is trying to deport to Nauru. The legal battles have begun, writes Julie Cross.

Ninette Simons, the victim of an assault and burglary in the Perth suburb of Girrawheen. Picture: WA Police

Have you heard the one about the judge who allowed an Albanian criminal to appeal against deportation on the grounds his son doesn’t like foreign chicken nuggets?

Or the cannabis farmer who avoided being sent back to his home country after a court decided his daughter would be left ‘without a male role model’.

These cases sound like a joke, but they’re not.

They are just a couple of examples from the UK, of foreign criminals making a mockery of human rights laws.

And, now it could happen here.

The Human Rights Law Centre has stepped in to stop one of three former immigration detainees, all convicted criminals, from being sent to Nauru because his visa review was cancelled unlawfully.

“No one should be permanently exiled to a country that is not their home. Ripping people from their lives and stranding them offshore is a cruel, lifelong punishment,” the Human Rights Law Centre said in a statement.

Ninette Simons, the victim of an assault and burglary in the Perth suburb of Girrawheen.

Sometimes it seems that the human rights of foreign criminals are of more concern than those of law-abiding citizens, such as Ninette Simons.

The 73-year-old grandmother has unfortunately become the face of this horror show.

She was brutally bashed and robbed, allegedly by one of the 291 former immigration detainees with criminal convictions, released into the community under Labor’s watch.

Shockingly, almost a third of this cohort have gone on to be charged or convicted of other crimes.

Quite rightly, the public is fuming.

Unable to send them back to their country of birth, because they’re not deemed safe, the government came up with a plan to deport them to a third country.

You may have thought you’d heard the last of Nauru, after their detention centres were emptied, but the tiny island is back on the map after being the first country to agree to take Australia’s unwanted immigrants in return for payment.

No doubt we’ll soon be hearing stories about the terrible conditions they’ve been subjected to there.

In the UK, critics are saying the whole human rights carry-on is just a money spinner for the lawyers, extracting taxpayer funds to support the right of Albanian cannabis farmers to stay in the country.

Here, this debacle has already cost the taxpayer $100m.

It won’t be long before our judges are ruling against deportation because the immigrant’s son is a fussy eater.

Originally published as Foreign criminals seeking to avoid deportation to Nauru makes mockery of human rights law