After more than a decade of denied visa applications and deportation notices, the Aldeiri family got a call this week to say a decision had been made.
Exclusive: After 14 years of denied visa applications and deportation notices, the Aldeiri family got the call they had been waiting so long for this week.
Minister for Immigration Tony Burke had "intervened" in their decades-long fight to stay in Australia.
They were given an appointment at the immigration office on Wednesday and told nothing else.
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Rahma Aldeiri, 22, feared the worst.
"We didn't know what he was going to do, like, will he separate the family?" she told 9news.com.au.
"Is he just going to grant me and my sisters the permanent residency, but my parents won't get it?"
Instead, her family got the news they'd waited 14 years for.
Every single one of them – dad Sultan, mum Reem, Rahma, and her twin sisters Hareer and Mesk – had all been granted permanent residency.
Their fight was finally over.
"We were all just screaming and crying," Rahma said.
"We worked so hard this entire 14 years ... it was definitely worth it, but the process could have been easier."
The Aldeiri family came to Australia from Jordan in 2011, when Rahma was eight.
Have you got a story? Contact reporter Maddison Leach at mleach@nine.com.au
They were here to visit her maternal grandmother, an Iraqi refugee who had become an Australian citizen.
While here, Rahma's parents Sultan and Reem applied for protection visas.
They wanted to stay in Australia and built a life in Sydney, where Rahma and sisters, then just five, started school.
Neighbours called them a "role model family", and "great citizens without being actual citizens".
But their future was uncertain.
The family's protection visa applications made it all the way to the Federal Court but were denied.
So too were applications for child visas for Rahma and her sisters.
Scared for her future, Rahma started a Change.org petition in 2019 pleading to stay in Australia.
She was 15 and living in fear of being deported.
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"That was a terrible time," she said.
"I'd almost be finishing high school, but I couldn't even celebrate that because I didn't know what would happen next week."
The following year, the family were given an official deportation notice.
They emptied their Sydney home, bought tickets to Jordan, and made one last trip to Perth to see relatives.
Then the pandemic hit, borders slammed shut, and the Aldeiri family couldn't leave.
So their immigration lawyer, Simon Jeans, kept fighting for them to stay.
He made last-ditch applications for a ministerial intervention but it still took years for the family's case to be seen by Minister for Immigration Tony Burke in 2025.
By that time, the Aldeiri family had built a life in Perth.
Rahma had earned a nursing degree from Curtin University, and her twin sisters Hareer and Mesk had finished high school.
Being sent back to Jordan, a country they could barely remember, was unthinkable.
"It just doesn't make any sense for us to go back, we have nothing there. This is our home, why would we leave our home?" Rahma told 9news.com.au in February.
Words can't describe the relief she felt when they were granted permanent residency.
Rahma called it the best news of her life in a Change.org update to the 40,000 strangers who backed her petition.
She also thanked two Nine reporters – Jayne Azzopardi and 9news.com.au's Emily McPherson – for bringing her family's fight into the spotlight over the last 14 years.
"You helped give our family a voice when we felt voiceless," she wrote.
"You kept us going when things felt impossible."
Now she's looking forward to a stable future here in Australia.
As permanent residents, Rahma and her parents can finally get permanent work.
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Her younger sisters, both 19, can also start pursuing careers without fear of being deported.
Mesk is already studying engineering on a scholarship at the University of Technology, Sydney.
But Hareer, who had been unable to secure a scholarship, wasn't able to start a teaching degree due to high international student fees.
That won't be a problem now.
"Now we can buy a house, now we can have a little holiday ... I still can't process it," Rahma said.
"No more applications, no more chasing up Medicare, no more stressing about waiting for a call, nothing.
"Just you wake up and it's nice, it's silent ... it's all over, and we can just live normally now."
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