Migration Alliance has received news that is apparently reliable that the proposed changes to PIC 4020 which were introduced by the Migration Legislation Amendment (2017 Measures No. 4) Regulations 2017 have been disallowed by the Senate.
These changes came into force on 18 November 2017.
The changes would have enabled the Department to refuse a visa application on PIC 4020 grounds if an applicant had given or caused to be given either a bogus document or information that was false or misleading in a material particular within the 10 year period before the visa application was made (expanding the period from 12 months under the previous version of PIC 4020) and expanding the coverage of PIC 4020 so that it would apply not only to visas actually held by the applicant but also to visa applications made by the applicant.
We thank our friend and colleague Niraj Shrestha for bringing this to our attention.
A link to an SBS story on the disallowance of the change can be found here.