Family fear as South Australian mum faces deportation over IT blue

An SA family face being split and a mother threatened with deportation to Scotland as the Immigration Department refuses to budge over an innocent computer error.

Nick and Kirsty Grigg with son Ben and daughter Stevie.

A hardworking, law-abiding South Australian family face being split and a mother threatened with deportation to Scotland as the Immigration Department refuses to budge over an innocent computer error.

The Grigg family of Adelaide fear being split by the ruling, with mum Kirsty, a Scottish national, told she must leave the country by April 9, leaving behind citizen husband Nick and their two teenage children, Stevie and Ben, in Australia.

With the department under fire over its management of freed criminal non-citizens – several of whom have reoffended since their release – the harsh treatment of this decent family looms as another immigration headache for the Albanese government.

The case has parallels with that of the Green family in Adelaide. Electrician Mark Green narrowly avoided deportation to Scotland last year after a visa bungle caused by a bankrupt former employer.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham is now championing the Grigg family’s case and wrote on Monday to Immigration Minister Andrew Giles urging him to use his ministerial power to let Mrs Grigg stay.

Nick Grigg is an Australian citizen originally from Adelaide who has worked for the RAAF and as a photographer. He married Kirsty in 2003 and they went to live in Scotland with her family. When her parents died, the couple returned to Adelaide in 2021 to care for Mr Grigg’s ageing parents.

Mrs Grigg works in aged care with Southern Cross Care and holds a senior role leading a team of 20 employees. Her employer is strongly backing her bid to stay in Australia.

Mr Grigg told The Australian his wife’s visa problems began last year due to an innocent computer error. He had been uploading information to the Immigration Department portal in support of a partner visa subclass 820 using a “save and close” form similar to a passport application.

Without his knowledge, the department’s IT system processed the application before it was complete and rejected it, but the rejection email went to his wife’s spam folder.

The first the Griggs knew of the rejection came inadvertently via Medicare, when they received a letter on December 23 saying Mrs Grigg, Stevie and Ben were no longer eligible for Medicare benefits on account of the Immigration Department ruling.

The Green family. Picture: Roy VanDerVegt

Since then the family have been locked in a bureaucratic hell trying to resolve the matter.

“After we got the Medicare letter we rang Immigration and were told that Kirsty’s application had been rejected and to check our emails,” Mr Grigg told The Australian. “We searched our emails, eventually finding the notice of rejection in her spam folder. We immediately appealed online that day, only to be told three weeks later by the AAT that we had missed the deadline by six days.”

Since then the family have employed a migration agent and Mr Grigg has also started a landscaping business to cover the costs of their ordeal.

While the family are confident their children will be able to stay through the “citizenship by descent” process, the Immigration Department is so far refusing to budge on Mrs Grigg’s case, meaning she must leave Australia alone, or the family must pull their children out of high school so they can all leave together.

The Griggs have tried fruitlessly to contact Mr Giles and Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil, and are pleading for anyone in politics to intervene on their behalf.

“Kirsty loves her job, her colleagues and CEO are being very supportive and do not want her to leave,” Mr Grigg said.

“Our children are finally settling into their school after a long and difficult battle with homesickness, we just signed another year’s rental in November, we have spent our savings on applications and appeals.

“The gardening business I started just over 12 months ago still isn’t earning enough to survive on one wage. I am starting a small weekend job … but it still won’t be enough.

“Sending Kirsty home is splitting our family. She would have to find a new job and somewhere to live. We sold our house in Scotland to fund our move … It takes her out of the aged-care sector in Australia and we, the family, are left without her support and care on a minimal single income.”

Senator Birmingham told The Australian the Griggs were a good family and their case needed to be reviewed before April 9.

“Immigration ministers are given discretionary powers so that common sense can be applied when bureaucracy has stuffed things up,” he said.

“The case of Kirsty Grigg sounds like one of bureaucratic and administrative failure that warrants ministerial intervention.

“I have today hand-delivered a letter to the Immigration Minister urging him to intervene in time to save the Grigg family from being torn apart, and avoiding any further unnecessary additional stress and cost.”

SA Premier Peter Malinauskas has become aware of the case through The Australian and his office on Monday night said he would also be writing to the minister in support of the Grigg family. Mr Malinauskas proved instrumental last year in the Green family case, successfully lobbying Mr Giles to let them remain in SA.

A government spokesperson told The Australian that Mr Giles was “aware of the case”.