A SERBIAN family is preparing to enjoy Christmas in Cyprus after having had the threat of deportation lifted by the Supreme Court.
Neboja Micovic has now been granted temporary residence after a lengthy legal battle against his deportation which saw him spending 83 days behind bars pending his appeal. He has now been granted leave to stay while his appeal is heard.
The Micovic family hit the headlines earlier this year when Neboja Micovic was arrested for overstaying his visa.
Neboja, his wife Jelena and their two daughters Elena, 13, and Sophia, 9, arrived in Cyprus legally in 1998. For seven years they worked and lived in Limassol. They bought a flat, after receiving relevant permission from the state.
Their daughters speak only Greek, attend a Greek school and have adjusted to the Cypriot way of life.
“I don’t know why they don’t want us here and why we have to leave, I think it’s not fair and they should leave us alone. I have my life here, my friends,” said Sofia yesterday.
Elena was also worried about the implications of being sent back to Serbia. “We have adjusted to life in Cyprus and couldn’t imagine living there because life is completely different there and people have different behaviours.”
The Court’s decision to extend Micovic’s residency leave comes as a relief to the family as he was due for deportation on January 6.
“We believe it was unfair for the Immigration Office to want us to leave by January 6. We want to stay until the court hearing,” Neboja says. “We left the war to come here, thinking that we would build a future, but something else happened.”
The family fled the war from their homeland in Yugoslavia and came to Cyprus in 1998. Neboja was granted a work permit until the end of 1999. Overstaying his permit until 2002, he was issued another one, which was valid until May this year. When Micovic applied again, his request was rejected and after overstaying his visa further, he was arrested on August 27. He then appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the man be freed and allowed to live and work in Cyprus until his case was heard.
EU law states that anyone who has lived in Cyprus for over five years must be retroactively granted long-term residency. At the time of his arrest, Neboja had been living in Cyprus for seven years.
