Sobering news from Australia today with the story that 12 Irish people have been deported over the past two weeks for trying to overstay their visa.

It looks as if it is the tip of an iceberg as there are record numbers of Irish entering Australia on one-year working visas who want to stay on.

For some, their only option was to fake an application for the second-year working visa.

The Aussies run a very tight ship with immigration. They keep a record of every person entering the country and then they go check on them if there's no record of them departing.

A friend of mine was nearly deported 20 years ago when she got delayed traveling across the country from Perth to Sydney.

She missed her scheduled flight and rebooked another for 10 days later, thus going over her 12 months. The authorities promptly contacted her to find out why she hadn't left.

Twenty years later, they're only more efficient at tracking people entering and leaving the country.