To the Hon Chris Bowen MP
Minister for Immigration and Citizenship
Parliament House, Canberra, ACT Australia
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Minister,
It is with great anger that I see your Department has again discriminated
against a person with a disability and her family migrating to Australia for
the flimsiest of reasons claiming she will be a burden on the Australian
health system when she has been working to support herself in the UK.
This action is outright discrimination and makes a mockery of Australia
ratifying the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on
the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
For the past two years you have sat on the recommendations from the 'Inquiry
into Migration treatment of disability: Enabling Australia, June 2010' to at
least slightly improve the system.
http://tinyurl.com/6uutntr
I call on you to remove all discrimination against people with disabilities
migrating to Australia and immediately overturn this discriminatory against
the Trelfall family.
Frank Hall-Bentick
Unit 4, 65 York Street
Richmond, Victoria 3121
Police recruit denied entry to Australia because his stepdaughter, Sarah,
has autism.
http://tinyurl.com/78vsn67
* by: David Jean
* From:The Advertiser <http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/>
* June 12, 201211:00PM
London police sergeant Pete Threlfall with son Lukas, wife Yvonne and
stepdaughter Sarah, who is autistic. Source: Supplied
AN English policeman and his family are devastated after being told they
cannot move to South Australia because his stepdaughter, Sarah, is autistic.
London Metropolitan Police sergeant Peter Threlfall is outraged at the
decision, which was made despite his daughter Sarah, 25, having two jobs and
volunteering with the Scout and Guide movement. She had planned to study
hairdressing when they arrived here.
Mr Threlfall was preparing to move his wife and family to South Australia,
but was told in December they had been denied visas under the Regional
Sponsored Migration Scheme.
He had been offered a job as a constable at Ceduna, on the state's West
Coast, and was due to start work as soon as his visa was approved.
Mr Threlfall has spent the past few months trying to reverse the decision
but his family is now resigned to staying in the UK.
The refusal to let the Threlfalls into the country was based on the
presumption his step-daughter Sarah's condition would place a burden on
healthcare and community services in Australia.
Mr Threlfall said Sarah worked part-time as both a cleaner and a store
assistant. His family was not seeking any assistance for Sarah and were
shattered that they could no longer move to Australia.
He said he had spent about six months and $8000 going through the
recruitment process and had missed out on career advancement in London
because he had been focused on the move.
"Sarah is not a drain on UK resources and would not have been on Australia,"
he said.
An Immigration Department spokesman confirmed Mr Threlfall and his family
had applied for visas. His daughter had not met the legislated health
requirement, which was partly to restrict public expenditure on healthcare
and community services.
There were no legal grounds for a health waiver and had the family been in
Australia they may have had grounds to appeal, the spokesman said.
It is one of a several decisions disability advocates have branded
"discriminatory".
Two months ago, Filipino doctor Edwin Lapidario avoided deportation only
after directors at his Hackham Medical Centre workplace agreed to pay
$52,000 towards his autistic son's medical costs.
In 2008, a migrant doctor working in Victoria was threatened with
deportation because his son had Down syndrome.
It took an international outcry and the intervention of then Immigration
Minister Chris Evans to overturn the decision to deport German doctor
Bernhard Moeller and his family.
Intellectual Disability Association of SA chairman David Holst and Dignity
for Disability MP Kelly Vincent have both called for an immediate overhaul
of the "discriminatory" policies.
"A decision made on some sort of disability shouldn't be grounds for someone
being in the country - it is discrimination," Mr Holst said.
Ms Vincent said making black-and-white decisions based someone's disability
was unacceptable. "It is very concerning and I think insulting to put all
people with disabilities in the same basket," she said.
"We need to stop pretending that people with disabilities and their families
don't pay taxes too."
Autism SA chief executive Jon Martin said people with Autism Spectrum
Disorder could make "excellent social and economic contributions".
SAPOL said it did not comment on individual recruitments. It did confirm it
had no immediate plans to recruit more officers from the UK. The latest
round of 93 UK recruitments has just ended.
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