Vulnerable Thai teen wins appeal to live in Australia
October 29 2009 by Liam Clifford
A teenager in Australia has been granted permanent residency by Australian immigration after a long campaign to keep her in the country.
A Thai-born teenager, who once lived in a slum in fear of sex slavery, has been
granted Australian citizenship, giving her the right to live in Australia
permanently after a six-year battle.
Plarm Pongprom lives in Mareeba in
Queensland, which she says is now her home. The 17-year-old is studying in
Australia to become a beauty therapist and says "being [an Australian] citizen
means everything to me, it means I'm safe."
Plarm’s grandparents have
long campaigned for their granddaughter to win the permanent right to live in
Australia. They explain that her parents were drug addicts and had their
daughter, then just five years old, selling water on a train to make
money.
Her mother took her to Australia to visit her grandparents and her
grandfather says “I wouldn't let her go back."
In the past six years
Australian immigration officials have threatened to send Plarm back to Thailand
on two different occasions, but she has remained living in Australia
throughout.
Plarm says she feels like an Australian: "everything about me
looks Thai, but my attitude is not."
She will be made an Australian
citizen at a ceremony today.
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