Migration Help
5th February 2010, 04:25 PM
BY DONNA PAGE
05 Feb, 2010
AFTER more than four years apart, a Newcastle woman will be reunited with her eight-year-old daughter after the Federal Government approved a humanitarian visa application this week.
Lovette Walker will be twice as tall as when her mother Princess Gbeadeh last saw her in a crowded refugee camp in West Africa.
The news yesterday ends a four-year battle by Ms Gbeadeh and Newcastle-based migration officer deputy director of Northern Settlement Services Lulu Tantos, who have been fighting to have Lovette allowed into Australia.
"I really can't believe it. I am just so happy that she is now going to be with me where she belongs," Ms Gbeadeh said yesterday.
"She has seen so many things that she is not supposed to have seen as a child, but now she will have a new life, a happy life. She will have good food, a good education and she will feel safe. All she talks about is wanting to try a bicycle."
The Herald reported in October last year that Ms Gbeadeh believed her daughter, also known as Lofty, had been killed with other members of her family in a village massacre in 2003.
Just weeks before Ms Gbeadeh came to Australia from a Guinea refugee camp in 2005, she was informed her daughter was alive.
The girl survived because she was sent from the village by a relative to collect water just minutes before the massacre took place.
The then two-year-old girl was taken in by a family who spent two years trying to find Ms Gbeadeh, who fled to a neighbouring country after being told her daughter had been killed.
She is being cared for by an aunt in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
After the amazing discovery that Lovette was alive, Ms Gbeadeh made an unsuccessful attempt in the refugee camp to get her daughter included on her humanitarian visa to Australia.
She was advised it was better to make the application from Australia, which she did in the weeks after arriving in Newcastle.
But in 2006 it was denied because Ms Gbeadeh could not prove the child was hers.
Lovette's birth certificate was burnt in the village raid and Ms Gbeadeh could not afford DNA testing.
After being contacted by The Herald last year, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship invited Ms Gbeadeh to submit a second application and agreed to pay for DNA testing.
News arrived in Newcastle early yesterday morning that the visa had been granted and that arrangements were being made for Lovette to fly to Australia.
She will live with Ms Gbeadeh and her two-year-old sister Promise.
SOURCE (http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/general/reunion-for-a-lost-child/1742979.aspx)
MH
05 Feb, 2010
AFTER more than four years apart, a Newcastle woman will be reunited with her eight-year-old daughter after the Federal Government approved a humanitarian visa application this week.
Lovette Walker will be twice as tall as when her mother Princess Gbeadeh last saw her in a crowded refugee camp in West Africa.
The news yesterday ends a four-year battle by Ms Gbeadeh and Newcastle-based migration officer deputy director of Northern Settlement Services Lulu Tantos, who have been fighting to have Lovette allowed into Australia.
"I really can't believe it. I am just so happy that she is now going to be with me where she belongs," Ms Gbeadeh said yesterday.
"She has seen so many things that she is not supposed to have seen as a child, but now she will have a new life, a happy life. She will have good food, a good education and she will feel safe. All she talks about is wanting to try a bicycle."
The Herald reported in October last year that Ms Gbeadeh believed her daughter, also known as Lofty, had been killed with other members of her family in a village massacre in 2003.
Just weeks before Ms Gbeadeh came to Australia from a Guinea refugee camp in 2005, she was informed her daughter was alive.
The girl survived because she was sent from the village by a relative to collect water just minutes before the massacre took place.
The then two-year-old girl was taken in by a family who spent two years trying to find Ms Gbeadeh, who fled to a neighbouring country after being told her daughter had been killed.
She is being cared for by an aunt in the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
After the amazing discovery that Lovette was alive, Ms Gbeadeh made an unsuccessful attempt in the refugee camp to get her daughter included on her humanitarian visa to Australia.
She was advised it was better to make the application from Australia, which she did in the weeks after arriving in Newcastle.
But in 2006 it was denied because Ms Gbeadeh could not prove the child was hers.
Lovette's birth certificate was burnt in the village raid and Ms Gbeadeh could not afford DNA testing.
After being contacted by The Herald last year, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship invited Ms Gbeadeh to submit a second application and agreed to pay for DNA testing.
News arrived in Newcastle early yesterday morning that the visa had been granted and that arrangements were being made for Lovette to fly to Australia.
She will live with Ms Gbeadeh and her two-year-old sister Promise.
SOURCE (http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/general/reunion-for-a-lost-child/1742979.aspx)
MH