Couple’s desperate battle to stop Australia deporting their sick daughter to UK

New life: Sienna Tippett, six, was a baby when her family emigrated
Isobelle Gidley26 July 2016

A former London couple are locked in a desperate battle with the Australian government to prevent their six-year-old daughter being deported to the UK — because she has a mystery medical condition.

It affects Sienna Tippett’s speech and balance and officials have decided she is a burden on the country’s health system and, unlike parents Kai Tippett and Hayley Niedzielska, who emigrated with her six years ago, she cannot stay.

It means that despite having settled into a new life when Sienna was six months old, the family, including her siblings Charley, 16, and Abbie, 13, will have to return to England if appeals to allow her to remain are rejected.

Her parents, who live in Lennox Heads on the north coast of New South Wales, were told that Sienna had to go because a review signed by an unnamed doctor stated that she doesn’t meet “criteria” .

Mr Tippett said today: “We had a perfect start to our ‘dream come true’ life in Australia — idyllic, we were all living the dream. And then this happened. The rest of the family can stay here — but Sienna can’t. And if she has to go, it means we will all have to go. It was in late 2012 that we started to notice Sienna, then 18 months old, was not meeting her developmental milestones and had delayed speech. As time went on we noticed her balance and co-ordination were unsteady.”

Family matters: Sienna with her sister Abbie and brother Charley

He said medical tests on her were frightening, with suggestions that Sienna might not fully develop into an adult. “With this, our world came crashing down. We couldn’t understand how this could happen to us.”

Mr Tippett, who has plans to invest all of the family’s money into property development, to turn over £250,000 a year, has launched an appeal that is attracting thousands of signatures and will be presented to immigration minister Peter Dutton.

“I and my wife have had our applications for permanent residency approved, but my daughter’s has been refused. It’s a gut-wrenching feeling”, he said. “Sienna is learning Auslan sign language, which is only for Australia. So if she went back to England she would have to learn a complete new language to even be able to communicate with people.”

The family received a glimmer of hope today, when migration lawyer Nathan Willis said they appear to have a good case.

He told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “This would seem to be one of those sorts of situations where the minister should intervene for the sake of ensuring a just outcome for some people who have already got a pretty difficult situation.

“They don’t need it to be made more difficult by an arbitrary application of immigration law, which doesn’t take into account that life is not always black and white.”

A spokesman for Mr Dutton said he was yet to be given the details of Sienna’s case, and Australia’s Department of Immigration and Border Protection said the family’s plea for his intervention was currently being assessed.

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