Family’s long battle to stay in SA as ISIS brides waved through

An SA electrician who was asked to emigrate to fill local labour market shortages has suffered another delay in his ­battle for residency.

Rebecca, Kelly and Mark Green with dog Maisie. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

Just weeks after the ISIS brides and anti-vax tennis player Novak Djokovic had their visa issues resolved, an Adelaide electrician who was asked to emigrate to Australia from Scotland to fill local labour market shortages has suffered another delay in his ­battle for residency.

Mark Green, 44, has spent the past 10 years working hard in South Australia after he, wife Kelly and daughter Rebecca were urged to emigrate from Scotland so Mr Green could work here as an electrician.

The family has spent the past six months trying to have their problems addressed by Immigration Minister Andrew Giles, urging the minister to use his discretionary powers to grant them permanent resident status.

The three-month deadline for the minister’s decision was set to expire next Friday, but the Greens have now been informed that the process has been extended by another three months.

“We are trying to be patient, but it is becoming pretty hard,” Mr Green said. “We just want to be able to start our lives properly here, to get a mortgage and place some roots here. As a father, I am particularly concerned about ­Rebecca. She wants to study nursing and because of our visa status … she can’t study anything.

“We love this country and we want to be able to stay so we can keep putting back into it.”

Since his arrival 10 years ago, Mr Green worked tirelessly in the solar panel industry and only fell foul of the immigration laws due to a visa bungle by a former employer who went broke.

He has not claimed a cent of welfare and even paid out of his own pocket to send Rebecca to a local government high school in Adelaide’s southern suburbs.

The Greens have incurred more than $200,000 on legal bills and other costs in their battle to stay here, but were due to be deported on August 10.

In an 11th-hour reprieve, Mr Giles agreed to review their case after they and SA Premier Peter Malinauskas asked whether it would be appropriate for the ­minister to use his discretionary power to grant them residency.

Through their lawyer, the Greens are using the precedent set in August by Mr Giles in granting permanent residency to the Nadesalingam family from Sri Lanka to argue that they too should be allowed to stay.

Mr Green said he did not want to criticise the process but could not help but note the resolution of the cases involving the ISIS brides and Novak Djokovic.

The Australian understands Mr Malinauskas is in touch with the federal government over the Greens and is privately backing their bid to stay in SA.

SA Best MLC Frank Pangallo said the case was becoming “beyond a joke”. “The government can decide in a heartbeat to let the wives of ISIS terrorists back into the country and revoke the visa cancellation of a world-famous sportsman yet struggles to make a decision to allow the Green family to live permanently in Australia,” he said. “There is no way on earth this loving, hardworking, taxpaying family should be forced to leave our shores after calling Australia home for the past 10 years – especially given the reasons they face being kicked out are totally out of their control.”

Mr Giles’s office has said that it is ­unable to comment on individual applications for permanent residency.