Eight-year-old Lisa was only one year old when she came to the Backström family outside Lidköping for the first time. She has lived there for the past four years and Hans and Paulina have become her guardians.
Her biological mother’s mental condition means that she is unable to take care of her.
No biological father is in the picture. Now Lisa will be deported all by herself to an orphanage in Albania.
Can only speak Swedish
– It would be a disaster, says Paulina Backström, who received custody of Lisa last year.
– She doesn’t have anyone there. We are her family, her security. It would be a huge trauma. And she doesn’t know Albanian. She neither understands nor speaks Albanian.
Lisa’s biological mother, who is from Albania, has also been rejected and is now seeking asylum in another European country instead. She tells TV4 Nyheterna that she wants her daughter to stay with the Backström family, where she is safe and receives love.
Is an Albanian citizen
But the Swedish Migration Agency believes that Lisa, whose real name is Adelisa, should be deported to a country where she only lived for a couple of years as a child. She was deported with her mother the first time when she was about 2.5 years old. But after a couple of years they came back here.
– There are no sufficient reasons, as the legislation is designed, for her to get a residence permit in Sweden, says Jesper Tengroth, press manager at the Migration Agency.
– She is an Albanian citizen. The legislation is not designed so that everyone should have as good a time as the children have in Sweden. If you are from a country where there is a safe environment, you should be there.
May not adopt
The couple have also had their application to adopt Lisa turned down. The district court in Skaraborg believes, among other things, that contact with the biological mother would be made more difficult by an adoption. The decision also states that “enabling a residence permit is not grounds for adoption”.
Now the family is awaiting the verdict from the Court of Appeal, where they appealed. The deportation has had to wait while a decision regarding adoption is investigated.
The decision from the Court of Appeal is expected any day now. If there is a no, it won’t be long before Hans and Paulina have to drive Lisa to the border police in Gothenburg, who will take her to a plane going to Albania.