Aged care nurse facing deportation after more than 15 years in Australia

Clifford Chisengalumbwe came to Australia to build a better life. Now, after 15 years, the aged care nurse and his family are caught in a red-tape nightmare and set to be deported.

Clifford Chisengalumbwe came to Australia more than 15 years ago searching for a better life.

He left his home country of Zambia in southern Africa in 2006 to build a family and access education that he could not in his home country.

Now, after almost two decades, Mr Chisengalumbwe, 43, who is an enrolled nurse at the Lerwin Nursing Home in Murray Bridge, his wife Ngoza, 37, and their daughter, Mckayla, 8, are being forced out of the country they have made their home.

The Chisengalumbwe family will be deported from Australian on September 30 after their applications for a bridging visa extension were rejected.

“We came here for a better life,” Mr Chisengalumbwe said.

And despite being invited by the state government to apply for residency as a skilled migrant, Mr Chisengalumbwe’s calls for Immigration Minister Andrew Giles to exercise special powers to afford him leniency have been fruitless.

Mr Chisengalumbwe’s wife also works in aged care, recruiting the nurses desperately needed to fill the sector’s labour shortage.

Clifford Chisengalumbwe with his daughter Mckayla. Picture: Dean Martin

Immigration Solutions chief executive Mark Glazbrook, who is acting for the Chisengalumbwes, has written to Mr Giles asking for the family to be granted permanent residency as skilled migrants amid Australia’s worsening skilled labour shortage.

At the very least, he said, the family should be granted a new temporary visa so they can apply for permanent residency without having to leave the country.

“He’s exactly the kind of skilled migrant that regional Australia needs,” Mr Glazbrook said.

Currently, the Chisengalumbwe family’s visa does not allow an application for permanent residency to be lodged within Australia.

Mr Giles declined to comment.

For Mr Chisengalumbwe, going back to Zambia is not an option.

“Going back there would be very hard,” he said.

He said he feared persecution for his support of the previous government in Zambia.

“People back home are barbaric,” he said.

“In my country you can kill someone and get away with it.

“The struggle in Africa is real.”

He said he does not have a support network to return to.

“I don’t really have family,” he said.

Mr Chisengalumbwe said he was desperate to stay and continue working in the aged care sector.

“I’ve built all these relationships over the years,” he said.

“Where I come from in Zambia our grandparents are the ones that raised us … when they get older we look after them just like here in Australia.”

The Chisengalumbwe family is not alone in their fight for residency, with another South Australian family facing deportation after their bridging visas were not extended.

Navninder Kaur and her husband Vikram Singh will also be booted out of Australia on September 30 if they are not afforded leniency to apply for permanent residency within the country.

Navninder Kaur and her husband Vikramjit Singh are facing deportation on September 30. Picture: Supplied

The couple has been hit with a string of bad luck after being scammed by a fraudulent migration agent, who they say scammed them out of around $45,000 before lodging the wrong visa application and disappearing.

Ms Kaur, 35, who came to Australia when she was just 18, said she had no life to return to in India.

“We don’t have any home to go back to,” she said.

A change.org petition urging Mr Giles to intervene has reached almost 40,000 signatures.

Mr Glazbrook has also requested ministerial intervention on behalf of Ms Kaur and Mr Singh.

Three weeks ago, Scottish electrician Mark Green was given an 11th-hour reprieve to remain in Australia to lodge his application for permanent residency.