Geelong mum Kelly Webb’s desperate plea to avoid deportation
A Geelong mother has lodged an eleventh hour application to the Federal Court to avoid being sent back to England and ultimately separated from her three-year-old daughter.
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A Victorian mother is making a desperate eleventh hour application to the Federal Court in the bid to stop her deportation and being separated from her children forever.
Geelong mum Kelly Webb, 33, a convicted criminal is facing removal from the country under the Federal Government’s controversial “character test” laws, which will see her permanently separated from her three-year-old-daughter who is an Australian citizen.
In her final bid to stay, Webb has made a plea to the country’s highest court for an appeal application after her permanent residency was cancelled and ministerial intervention to override the decision rejected last month.
It comes as top QC Ian Hills slammed the legislation and said it should include an “Australian-made” clause, excluding the deportation for people who were infants when they immigrated.
Webb, was brought from England at the age of two in 1988, but never applied for citizenship.
After serving time in prison for several crimes she has been held in the Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre for 17 months fighting her looming removal.
Once a week she receives a visit from her youngest daughter Shae-Lee 3, who is an Australian citizen and will not be allowed to leave the country with her mother.
“I look at my daughter and it just kills me,” said Webb.
“She is already asking me questions. She is saying when are you coming home.
“They won’t allow her to leave with me. I won’t have a home or any money over there.
“It is so hard. I am no angel, I know that and am so angry at myself.”
Under the law targeting foreign-born criminals the Department of Home Affairs must cancel visas when non-citizen is put behind bars for at least a year.
Webb suffered “monstrous” abuse at the hands of a stepfather she killed in self-defence at the age of 16, which set her on a path of crime.
As an adult she first came to the attention of authorities in 2016, when she served an 18-month sentence for committing burglary with a knife.
She won a reprieve in 2017 promising authorities she would remain crime-free but stole alcohol from a shop and fronted a Geelong court for several theft charges, prompting her removal.
QC Hills said it was worrying that people who had lived in Australia their entire lives were not being excluded from deportation.
“It has always troubled me that people who come as infants who do not take out citizenship, commit an offence and then suddenly find they are being deported,” he said.
“It throws up these cases that are very sad when compared to someone who comes here as an adult and commits serious offences within a year or two.
“Australian-made is probably a good exclusion clause to have”
Webb’s former lawyer Liz Dowling has joined her fight calling for the federal laws to be changed.
“Her mother is adopted and Kelly came here as a two year old. She has no one over there, “ Ms Dowling said.
“She has had it hard. Her stepfather abused her and she ended up killing him and because of that she went down the wrong path.
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“She is a criminal, but she is our criminal. We made her. There needs to be a different rule for someone who came here as adult on a refugee visa or someone on a student visa opposed to a child brought here as an infant who’s parent doesn’t fill out a form.”
Webb has five children, all of whom are currently living with extended family.
Webb’s application to the federal court is the last chance for an appeal, but even if successful in having her case heard she does not have the funds to pay for legal representation.