By Paras Nagpal, Jasdeep Kaur, Carl Dixon | SBS | Australia |
Navninder Kaur and her husband Vikramjit Singh live in Goolwa, a small town in regional South Australia, where they previously ran an Indian restaurant for more than four years.
However, the couple have been told they must leave the country by September 30 or be deported after their third application for a ministerial intervention was rejected last month.
According to letters seen by SBS Punjabi, their skilled visa applications were rejected by the Department of Home Affairs due to a lack of evidence to show that an impartial recruitment process was carried out before Ms Kaur was employed as a cook at the restaurant where Mr Singh was a director.
However, Ms Kaur maintains they have proper documentation to support her claim of fair recruitment, only their immigration lawyer failed to provide it to the department within the required 28 days.
They now have less than five weeks in which to convince the government they should be allowed to stay.
More than 37,000 people have signed the couple’s online petition calling on Immigration Minister Andrew Giles to intervene.
In addition, Ms Kaur says they have also received letters of support from MP Rebekha Sharkie and local mayor Keith Parkes.
Ms Kaur arrived in Australia on a student visa in 2007 to study a TAFE course and transitioned through different courses in order to qualify for permanent residency.
Early on she met Mr Singh, who had been living in Australia since 2006.
In 2014, Ms Kaur alleges a man posing as an immigration lawyer promised to lodge an application for a permanent skilled visa application on her behalf.
“My student visa was expiring in August 2014 when I met an immigration lawyer through a friend to explore my options of a permanent residency pathway….He took $30,000 before lodging a 457 visa on my behalf prior to the expiry of my student visa.”
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