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Vietnam Veteran told to leave Australia
A VIETNAM veteran who has lived in Australia for more than 30 years is facing deportation after he was bluntly told by a junior immigration official he had no reason to stay. Roger Harris, 60, was one of Australia's original tunnel rats and volunteered for two tours of duty with the Australian Army in Vietnam between 1965 and 1968, and attained the rank of sergeant. He said yesterday the Department of Immigration had made him jump through hoops and then told him his application for the renewal of his residency had been cancelled because he no longer had a compelling reason to stay. Raised in a British orphanage after World War II, and sent to Australia at the age of 16 in 1961, Mr Harris said he did not realise he wasn't an Australian citizen until 1981 when he went to apply for a passport to go to Britain. Since then he had lived in Australia for 12 years, and then in the US where he kept, and regularly renewed, his resident return visa because he intended to settle back in Australia. However, after he came back to Australia in April to live with his son's family and watch his grandchildren grow up, he faced a wall of resistance from an officer at the Department of Immigration. "She said I don't see that you've got a compelling reason to be here. She said you've got no compelling reason because you've been away so long," Mr Harris said. "A week later she rang to say she was going to cancel the application. She said military service in the 60s doesn't count, it's too long ago. I just boiled." Posted by: Spavirt Pheng6042 2005-06-23 |
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