Vivian Alvarez Solon:

The story is not yet over

VIVIAN ALVAREZ SOLON is back home in Australia, trying to pick up the pieces of a shattered life. The Australian of Filipino descent is a victim of wrongful deportation, a grievous error that the Canberra government has had to publicly apologize for.

Kicked out of the country in 2001 after being mistaken for an illegal alien, Mrs. Solon practically vanished from the face of the earth for four years. Efforts by her family to trace her were frustrated by the stonewalling of Australian immigration officials. The search for Mrs. Solon intensified only after similar cases of wrongful deportations emerged.

Last May Australian diplomats were led to a hospice in Olongapo City run by Catholic nuns. There they found a woman, bound to a wheelchair, quite unsure of who she was. It was the long-lost deportee. The diplomats were eager to fly Mrs. Solon back to Australia but her lawyers wanted the conditions of her return clearly spelled out. Seven months on, with a suitable agreement close at hand, the lawyers brought Mrs. Solon home.

The agreement, as described by Australia’s Family and Community Services Minister Kay Patterson, includes free medical and health care, financial help with establishing a home and support for a family member who will be caring for her.

Ms. Patterson considered it “a very generous and appropriate package.”

“The most important thing we can do is settle her back in Australia as effectively and quickly as we can, look after her and make sure her needs are met,” she said.

We hold Australia to its promise that Mrs. Solon will get the compensation she deserves. But its obligation doesn’t stop there. Canberra must now plug the loopholes in its immigration system that led Mrs. Solon to her journey to the depths of misery. And to do that it must face up to the issue of accountability.

The case of Vivian Alvarez Solon was investigated by an independent panel led by a former police commissioner, Neil Comrie. In his report to the Australian parliament, Mr. Comrie blamed what happened to Mrs. Solon to systemic faults in the Australian immigration department.

Mr. Comrie said the “management of Vivian’s case can only be described as catastrophic.”

The report highlighted the fact that three senior immigration officials had found out about the mistaken deportation in 2003, but did nothing to correct it.

“Their failure to act is inexcusable—morally, professionally and legally,” Mr. Comrie said.

The Comrie report has unleashed such a tempest that the immigration minister, Amanda Vanstone, was pressed into action. She announced that two of the officials were being investigated and that third has since resigned and faces no action.

The story of Vivian Alvarez Solon needs a final chapter, and that chapter must include the fate of the immigration officials under investigation.