Minister gives hope to woman refused visa to live with sister

Peter Dutton will decide within days whether to stop the planned deportation of a South African woman.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton will decide within days whether to stop the planned deportation of a South African woman who was refused a Remaining Relative Visa because of a ruling that she is not related to her biological sister, an Australian citizen living in Perth.

Mr Dutton said he had been unaware of the highly unusual case of 58-year old Linda Oppel until he read about it in The Australian yesterday.

Ms Oppel said she was relieved that Mr Dutton was examining her case and she maintained it would be unfair for her to be deported based on a legal finding that she and her sister were not related.

“It’s a good sign — I’m feeling positive, I’m feeling a lot better,” she said at her home in Perth’s northern suburbs.

Ms Oppel, who has no family in South Africa and has lived in Australia since 2012, applied for the visa so she could stay in Perth with her two adult children, her baby grandson and her sister who moved to Australia 13 years ago.

But the application was rejected via a one-line response from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection last month.

“The Assistant Minister (Alex Hawke) has personally considered this request and has decided that it would not be in the public interest to intervene,” it said. This meant Ms Oppel and her daughter Venessa, 29, would need to leave Australia when their bridging visas expired on June 23.

Mr Dutton yesterday promised to examine Ms Oppel’s circumstances.

“The lady involved won’t be deported whilst I’m looking at the matter,’’ he told Perth radio station 6PR.

Ms Oppel’s husband of 30 years died of cancer in 2011, prompting her to move to Australia to be closer to her sister Monica. She later received a temporary 457 visa, which allowed her to work.

In 2014 the Migration Review Tribunal found that she had no familial link with Monica because Ms Oppel had been adopted by an older half-sister when she was 12.

The adoption occurred after Linda and Monica’s parents were killed in a car accident, forcing them to live in foster homes. Monica was not adopted with Linda because she was 18 and had left foster care by then.

“The effect of the adoption has been to sever the link between the applicant and her biological parents, and hence the link between the applicant and (Monica),” the tribunal said.