Australian Immigration Daily News

Here’s a quiz to get your brains working at the start of the week, and to get ready to face the mysteries of the Migration Act that you will have to cope with. 

And the good news is that however you answer, no one else will know! You can keep your thoughts entirely to yourself, and your answer won’t be marked or broadcast to the rest of the world, no matter what it is! 

So here is the question: 

Migration Alliance has received a story today from an RMA today regarding an appalling refusal out of India, which deserves attention.  Here is that story:

"I received the attached refusal letter yesterday and to be honest I’ve never seen anything like it. It still has instructions to the processing officer in there, which have not been followed (no review rights option was selected), and there is absolutely no assessment or consideration of the applicant’s claims. The attached is the refusal letter in its entirely.

The application is of course finalised in immiaccount, I have emailed the team responsible and have been told ‘we’ll look into it’. I’ve also made a complaint with the global feedback team.

Readers of the Migration Alliance Website will recall that we posted an article on 20 March of this year, following reports in the media indicating that the government of Western Australia had apparently “frozen” the entire Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme in Perth. 

This “freeze” was apparently made to implement a campaign promise that was made by Mark McGowan, who was elected as Premier of Western Australia on 11 March 2017.

Our Migration Alliance colleague Ross Ahmadzi reported in an article that was posted on 26 June 2017 that Prime Minister Turnbull has now written to Premier Magowan to confirm that the Federal Government has agreed to remove the Perth region from the RSMS visa programme.

The dust following 1 July changes is beginning to finally settle, yet many foreign nationals who are currently living in Australia or those wanting to move to Australia are scratching their heads in figuring out the best strategy to do so. Just before 1 July, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection announced major changes to the Employer Nomination Scheme (Subclass 186 Visa) as well as Regional Migration Scheme (Subclass 187 Visa).  The impact of these changes left many applicants no longer eligible to pursue permanent residence through their nominating employer.

The following changes have been implemented with immediate effect on 1 July:

English Language

The difficulty of challenging a decision by the Minister not to revoke the mandatory cancellation of a visa on character grounds is illustrated  by a recent decision of the Full Court, handed down at the end of April: Marzano v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2017) FCAFC 66 (26 April 2017).

Once again, this case shows that residence in Australia since early childhood, and personal circumstances that provide “compassionate” circumstances that weigh in favour of revocation of the cancellation decision may not be sufficient to “rescue” the visa holder’s right to remain in Australia.

And the case also shows that it may be very hard to come up with strong legal arguments to challenge a decision by the Minister not to revoke the cancellation.  In fact, the case shows that sometimes the legal representatives of a visa holder may be reduced to a position of “grasping at straws”, and that the “straws” are not strong enough to persuade the courts to overturn the decision not to revoke.