British Woman Faces Deportation From Australia For Criminal Past

A mother-of-five who hasn't left Australia since she's moved there aged two is facing deportation back to Britain because of her criminal past.

Kelly Webb, 30, was sentenced to 18 months in prison after she was found guilty of committing a burglary with a knife; she has now been taken into an immigration centre because her visa was revoked.

Under a new Australian law passed by the current government at the end of 2014, a visa may be cancelled if a person is imprisoned for longer than a year.



Webb moved to Australia in 1988 when she was two years old, but she never became an Australian citizen nor naturalised because she "never knew she had to," she told local radio 3AW.

In the interview she said that she cannot take her children, who are all Australian citizens, with her and that she wouldn't even if she could.

"It's not ideal, I have no money, no housing, no family. I'm being set up to fail," she said.

In a phone interview from Maribyrnong Detention Centre in Victoria the 30-year-old said that she learned her visa had been revoked three days before her parole hearing.

Webb, who admits to being a regular user of illegal drugs but claims to be 18 months clean, has an extensive criminal history, including a conviction for killing her stepfather after years of abuse.

Webb said in the radio interview that she had been incarcerated 11 times over the course of her life, and that she had no friends or family in the United Kingdom.

The mother-of-five said that she'll "die of a broken heart" and that she believes she won't see her children again if she is deported.

Webb concluded the interview with an appeal to Australian immigration minister Peter Dutton: "please give me another chance," she said.

Greg Barns, a spokesperson for the Australian Lawyers Alliance, told the radio broadcaster that this process is "absurd" and "grossly unfair" but he doesn't believe there is much hope for the mother-of-five to be allowed to stay in Australia.

Telegraph.