Hi all,

I have an important update for you. The heading suggests something bad when in fact it may be good news. The dept of Home Affairs has contacted me and told me that the minister for Immigration the Honorable Tony Burke will personally use a very rarely used section of the act (S195a) to assist Allysha.

Section 195A of the Migration Act 1958 allows the Minister to grant a visa to individuals in immigration detention if it is deemed to be in the public interest.

It would seem that your support and the support of Dick Smith and SBS who came to know about the matter due to your kind support were enough for the minister to become aware of our unusual case.

So, tomorrow Allysha will be placed in detention while the minister has time to review her case. It will take about 2 hours to get a result.

The scary thing is that by agreeing to have Allysha placed in detention she will have to give up all of her protections.

Our immigration lawyer does not know what to do or say because he said that he has never seen a case where the dept took charge of the matter, bypassed all of the normal procedures and made every effort to assure us that all will be ok. They really have been exceptionally nice to us.

I am confident that everything will work out and will provide another update tomorrow afternoon.

Regards
Andrew Locke