The world's oldest illegal immigrant, a 104-year-old Chinese woman called Cui Yu Hu, has gained the right to stay in Australia.

She had been ordered to leave the country earlier yesterday when a special appeal hearing by the Immigration Department refused to overturn a decision to send Cui Yu Hu back to her native Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China.

Amanda Vanstone, the Immigration Minister, was then asked to intervene to allow her to stay. Vanstone used her ministerial powers to give Cui a visa yesterday evening after reviewing her case, meaning she could remain in Australia with the family of her adopted daughter.

Airlines had said they would refuse to fly Cui anywhere for fears about health problems due to her age.

Cui arrived on a 12-month visitor's visa in 1995 to visit her adopted daughter Motoko Otani, who lives in the southern city of Melbourne.

Cui has outlived all her family and friends in China. Motoko Otani, who she adopted aged three during the Japanese occupation more than 60 years ago, is her only surviving relative.

The case has been a further embarrassment for the Australian Immigration Department, which revealed last month that it had held a schizophrenic woman listed as a missing person in a detention center for 10 months believing she was an asylum-seeker.

(China Daily March 9, 2005)