A terminally sick man who came to Australia when he was just ten months old is facing deportation to the United Kingdom, despite not having been there since 1974 when he was just a baby.
Robert Taylor, 50, a father of six and a grandfather of nine, hasn’t left Western Australia since, but despite almost five decades in Australia, he never became a citizen.
He had a permanent residency visa, but after being convicted of aggravated burglary in 2019 and getting a three-and-a-half-year prison term, that was cancelled.
Robert Taylor failed the visa’s character requirements brought in by the previous Coalition government, having been sentenced to a term of 12 months or more in prison.
In early 2021, a day before he was scheduled to be released on parole, he was taken into immigration detention in Perth and has been incarcerated ever since.
While being held and challenging his deportation order, Robert Taylor was diagnosed with lung cancer and told he had 12 months or fewer to live.
Despite the terminal diagnosis, the Australian government is still determined to send him back to a country he has no recollection of.
In an interview with ABC, Robert Taylor said he missed his children and that they meant the world to him.
He apologised for the crime committed after he became a methylamphetamine user following a work accident, that led to him facing deportation.
He said that he was deeply sorry and regretted what he’d done to the community and the victims and that if he could take it back, that he would.
He added that this was where he was now and that he couldn’t change what he’d done.
His daughter Keesha Taylor is pleading with the Immigration Minister, Andrew Giles, to show some compassion for her father.
Keesha Taylor, who lives four hours south of Perth in Manjimup with her three children and partner said that her father was having chemotherapy in there all alone, and that they couldn’t go there to be with him, and they couldn’t get up there because they weren’t very financially stable. That they work and just get by, and if they do go up there, it’s only for a couple of hours, and then they have to leave him again.
Robert Taylor’s family are spread across Western Australia, but none are in Perth, making visits to see him challenging.
This man might not be an Australian citizen and he might have committed a crime which he paid for. However, I bet that over the years Australia was happy to take all his tax-paying dollars.
This is absurd, of course, he should be allowed to stay.
If Robert Taylor paid his taxes and contributed to Australian society then he was a living and breathing citizen because being a citizen isn’t about a bit of paper, and why should he have become a slave to a crown city-state republic?
They should, of course, give this man a break. A bit of give and take because this man has absolutely nothing to go back to. Let him die in peace among his Australian family, and considering his dire health condition I don’t see why it would be a problem with him to stay.
When did we become so heartless?
They should let him stay – why keep punishing him? There are a lot more sinister people out there that have been let out of jail. He’s been in Australia all his life, it’s a no-brainer.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 