The Court of Second Instance (TSI) has approved an appeal filed by an Indonesian woman seeking to keep her residency status and those of her children after her husband, a permanent resident of Macau, passed away.
The court dubbed the decision to not renew the woman’s residency status and the cancellation of her children’s Macau IDs as “an offense to principles of pertinence, proportionality and reasonableness.”
According to a court ruling, the Indonesian woman married a Macau permanent resident of Chinese nationality back in 2003 in Australia. The couple had two daughters in Australia, one born in 2007 and the other in 2009.
The family moved to Xiamen, China, in 2011, after the man was diagnosed with cancer. They decided to return to Macau in February 2012, as his health failed to improve, in order to allow him to spend his last days with his family in his hometown.
The family moved to his mother’s house and his wife and daughters applied for Macau residency status as direct family members. They were granted temporary residency status in 2012. The woman’s Macau ID was expected to expire in July 2013, while those of her daughters were to expire in 2017.
On June 2012, however, her husband died at Kiang Wu hospital. With her Macau ID about to expire, the woman applied for a residency status renewal from the Immigration Services.
The office of the Secretary for Security denied her request for the renewal of her residency, claiming that the direct family member requirement, which had allowed her to be granted residency status in the first place, was no longer met. Subsequently, the residency statuses of her daughters were also terminated.
They filed an appeal with the Court of Second Instance arguing that the daughters should have been granted permanent residency status because their father was a permanent ID holder. Furthermore, they recalled that personal and property-related effects of a marriage do not cease when one of the spouses dies.
Other arguments presented by the mother and daughters suggested that, “family ties were not broken after the husband died; they still regard Macau as their life center and meet all requirements set for residency status applicants.”
Finally, they argued that the secretary’s decision has disrupted the family’s harmony, unity and stability.
The lower court had argued that permanent residency status is only granted to Chinese nationals who have continuously lived in Macau for seven consecutive years. Their children are entitled to permanent residency if they are Chinese nationals born outside Macau following one of the parents being granted Macau permanent residency.
The couple’s two daughters, however, are Australian nationals and therefore do not necessarily enjoy permanent residency status.
TSI recalled that although the Secretary’s decision was grounded in reason, the mother and both daughters have established their lives in Macau, and live with their maternal grandmother.
As a result, the death of their father does not necessarily imply that they should lose their residency status. It does also not imply that their mother should lose her residency status, since she has custody of both daughters, and losing her residency here would result in family breakdown.
The court recalled that the Macau government has concerns over economic and social costs when granting Macau residency to citizens, given the territory’s population rise. However, the court stressed that to find a just decision, it needed to take family and personal matters into account.
The cancelling of the children’s residency status would come at a great cost, and could have resulted in ruptures to the family. Therefore, the court decided to approve the mother and children’s appeal. CP
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