However, to be here for 50 years and not bother to become an Australian citizen? You really do have to wonder where allegiances lie in such cases. I felt almost compelled to be a citizen after about 7 years here. Like wise my sister and her husband, all of us from New Zealand and not far from Australia at all. Why then would someone come here from clear across the other side of the world, spend 50 years here, and not become a citizen? Just doesn't seem right to me.
But then again, neither does this. He was convicted of a serious offence in that he lit a fire. It didn't destroy any property apart from some scrub, but it must of had the potential. It goes without saying that lighting fires in Australia can be a huge threat to life and limb and cause untold property damage. Indeed some of the most destructive and deadly fires we've had here in the last 20 years have been deliberately lit. The man served 15 months in jail over it. He claimed mental illness as a mitigating factor (funny that, I'm mentally ill but don't go around lighting bushfires).
Upon relase from his jail time this happened:
But Wightman was apprehended immediately on leaving prison and detained at Yongah Hill detention centre, 90km east of Perth, for eight weeks before he was suddenly flown to Australia’s offshore detention centre on Christmas Island in the middle of the night.
Wightman’s brother Gary told Guardian Australia it was “morally wrong” that his brother was being held in immigration detention indefinitely.
“It’s just wrong on any moral level that people are in there in those conditions. Ian was convicted of a crime, he was sentenced and punished. He served his time and he was rehabilitated. He was released a free man but then they arrested him at the gates.”
He said Ian was finding immigration detention much harsher than prison. He has told family he was “keeping his head down” and did not participate in the riots that razed significant sections of the detention centre this week.
“But it’s just wrong. With prison, you’ve got your start date, you’ve got your end date,” you know how much time you have to serve,” Gary Wightman said. “But this, it’s just the uncertainty, they’ve got no idea when he might be released. It’s unbelievable. This detention is far, far worse than prison.”
Gary Wightman said his brother had told him there were dozens of other detainees – known as 501s after the section of the Migration Act that applies to their cases – with similar lifelong links to Australia in detention, facing deportation to countries they hardly knew.
“Some of the other guys’ stories, they are just tragic. These people shouldn’t be there. This is just wrong,” he said. The Guardian
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