AN AUSTRALIAN MAN is at risk of being deported to Ireland after losing his passport here in 1997.
Daniel Smyth, 44, learned of his potential deportation when his application for a new passport was rejected on the grounds that he had “acquired the citizenship of another country”.
Smyth told Melbourne newspaper The Age that he lost his Australian passport during a holiday in Ireland 18 years ago and returned home on an Irish passport his father had acquired for him.
Smyth realised he had relinquished his Australian citizenship 11 months ago, when he applied for an Australian passport to travel to Thailand and was told he only qualified for a bridging visa.
The Age quotes a spokesperson for Australia’s immigration department as saying the country’s citizenship legislation provides for “the automatic loss of Australian citizenship in some circumstances where an Australian citizen acquired the citizenship of another country”.
The 1948 Australian Citizenship Act provision has been listed along with Smyth’s criminal history as grounds on which to cancel his year-long visa, which expires on 4 November.
“I’m Australian as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t know there was any problem,” Smyth told the paper, adding that he was “very anxious” about the prospect of being separated from his two children, aged 11 and 13.
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