CANBERRA, Feb. 11 (Xinhua) -- The Australian High Court has ruled that Aboriginal people hold a special status and cannot be deported for criminal convictions.
The court on Tuesday voted 4-3 that Aboriginal Australians are not subject to the "alien" powers in the constitution, which enables the deportation of dual citizens who have committed "serious" crimes.
The precedent set by the ruling means nobody with indigenous Australian heritage can be deported from the country.
Two indigenous men who were born overseas but moved to Australia as children, Daniel Love and Brendan Thoms, have been facing deportation after serving jail sentences.
Love, who was born in Papua New Guinea, served more than a year in jail for assault and Thoms, who was born in New Zealand, served 18 months for domestic violence.
Lawyers for the men argued in court that indigenous people cannot be "alien" to Australia and thus could not be deported.
One of their lawyers, Claire Gibbs, told reporters outside the High Court on Tuesday that their case was not about citizenship but was instead about "who is an Australian national and who is a part of the Australian community."
"It's about the use of alien powers, which we believe the government has been using inconsistently, unfairly and, now we've proven, unlawfully," she said.
"So, in a practical sense, Brendan is still a New Zealand citizen, but he's not an alien in this country and he's protected from being deported.
"Aboriginal Australians can no longer be removed from the country that they know and the country that they have a very close connection with."
The Justices of the High Court, however, stopped short of clearing Love entirely -- saying in their ruling that they could not be certain of his Aboriginality based on the evidence presented in the case.
Gibbs said that she was confident lawyers could prove his Aboriginal heritage in court if forced to do so.
