A Perth grandmother has described her looming deportation back to South Africa as a "death sentence" after immigration knocked back her remaining relative visa application, claiming her sister living in Perth was not considered a relative.
Linda Oppel, 58, has been living in Australia since 2011, after moving to Perth to be with her sister following her husband's death.
Originally arriving on a 457 Visa, the 58-year-old lives in Perth along with her two adult children, grandchild and sister.
She told Radio 6PR on Monday her remaining relative visa application was recently denied as authorities did not consider her sister a biological relative.
"Our parents passed away when we were very young, I was five years old and I was adopted [by an older half-sister] for a short period of time," she said.
"When I came over to Australia... they declined [my visa] because we weren't biological sisters because of the adoption.
"We proved to immigration that we are biological sisters by giving a DNA test that was 99.6% positive.
"They've just said that we weren't real sisters, so that was quite a shock... my sister, that's the only family I've got left."
Ms Oppel said she had sold all her belongings in South Africa and would struggle to get a job at her age if she had to return.
"I've embraced Australia as my new home now with my two kids and my grandchild so I'm really devastated. I can't imagine myself going back and leaving my son and my grandchild behind," she said.
"We will get to the airport and won't know where to go - after five years you do lose contact with friends and I can't rely on friends to look after me.
"It's like a death sentence for me to leave my family behind, I won't be able to survive that, especially after the death of my husband as well."
Immigration minister Peter Dutton told Radio 6PR he was aware of Ms Oppel's case after reading about it in The Australian.
He has said the grandmother's deportation, scheduled for June 23, would be postponed until he had reviewed the matter.
"As I understand it, the assistant minister, Alex Hawke, has looked at the matter and decided not to intervene, that's the advice I got," he said.
"We deal with these complicated family ties and matters on a daily basis.
"I'll have a read through all of the detail, if there's action that I can take, or I deem necessary to take, then I can take that action, so I need just to have a look at the file, obviously it's an involved circumstance."
