A Perth family's 75-year-old grandma is being deported - because she's too sick.

Frances Davies has lived in Australia for almost seven years.

She has no family in the United Kingdom, where she’s from.

Her two children and four grandchildren are in Perth.

She is 75.

The Australian Government wants her to go home.

Since arriving in Australia after the death of her husband, Davies has been on a bridging visa.

Now her application for a permanent visa has been knocked back, and Davies is facing the prospect of being sent back to the UK, where she has no relatives and no support.

The immigration department says she is too sick to remain in Australia, but her daughter Karen Brabham says her mother is too ill to travel.

“Initially mum was in good health when she arrived in Australia after the death of her husband (our stepfather),” Brabham writes in an online petition she has set up to keep her mum in the country.

“She started to become ill approximately 18 months after her arrival and nearly lost her life on a couple of occasions over the past five years,” she said.

“Our concern is that at the age of 75  she would be returning to the UK  homeless and penniless with no family support.

“We have grave concerns for her health if she were to return to the UK. Sending her back would cause her enormous emotional stress and financial hardship.

“She could not afford the plane fare, the relocation costs and is physically unable to tolerate the long flight back to the UK. This would seriously impact on her already fragile health.”

Brabham told Mamamia that her mum had built a life here and would not be able to return to the UK alone.

“I would have to go with her and stay indefinitely, try and find her somewhere to live and furniture,” she said.

Davies has no relatives that she is in contact with in the UK, and her sickness would make it difficult for her to travel back, and to find an appropriate place to live.

“Mum’s blood disease, Cold Agglutinin Disease, is a rare blood disorder where the antibodies that are made in the bone marrow appear in high levels when the immune system malfunctions,” Brabham said.

“The body mistakenly perceives these as foreign, the antibodies that it produces and sets up an autoimmune response prematurely killing the red blood cells. The antibodies are activated by cold temperatures and react by causing clumping together of the red blood cells.”

She said Davies was very healthy when she arrived in Australia, but while she was waiting for her visa application to be processed (something the Immigration Department told her could take 10 years) she fell ill.

“She’d never had a sick day in her life,” Brabham said.

“It was a big shock. It’s just inhumane to expect a lady of that age with those health conditions to just leave the country and not care about what happens to her when she’s gone,” she said.

Since Davies arrived in Australia seven years ago she has become an active member of her church community, Brabham said.

“She makes clothes for children in third world countries… she does so much within the community. This is her home and she has made it her home,” she said.

The family are appealing the decision, and hope Immigration Minister Peter Dutton might step in and allow Davies to stay if all other appeals fail.