Australian Immigration Daily News

Essentially any damage on travel documents that result in machine-reading failure or affect critical identity information can result in the document being impounded and that the traveller being detained or prevented from travel, according to the Standard Operating Procedure manual (SOP) of the Australian Border Force.

Under legislation, it is a serious offence to use or facilitate the use of a cancelled or otherwise invalid Australian travel document. The SOP which was released on an FOI request states that, suspicious, cancelled or invalid travel documents and travel documents where the holder has a financial debt to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) which are presented at the border should be impounded by a delegated officer.

While the SOP notes that immigration officers have an over-riding obligation to facilitate the entry and departure of Australian citizens in a timely manner, they are however required to impound travel documents which they determine are “not usable as evidence of identity and citizenship of its holder or to facilitate international travel.”

...

Imagine that you have arrived at your office one fine autumn morning, and are happily drinking your coffee and reading the case law updates on the Migration Alliance blog when your phone rings and you get an urgent request for help, as follows:

“My partner visa has been cancelled by the Department!! Is there anything you can do to help me?”

And imagine further, that when you ask the potential client why the Department has cancelled his visa, he tells you the following:

We have very recently had a (lively!) debate on this blog about whether the Migration Act “tramples” on “common law” rights.

Coincidentally or not, there has just been a decision from the Federal Court which reinforces the concept that the requirement for “procedural fairness” is one of the basic cornerstones of the Act.

(As regular readers of this blog may recall, the failure to provide procedural fairness is one of the very few grounds upon which a decision by the Minister to cancel a visa on character grounds may be overturned).

Rolling strike action by thousands of public servants will start today and expected to continue for up to four weeks slowing down visa processing and causing significant delays at airports.

The department of immigration has warned that Immigration staff and Border Force officers will stop work at various times at international airports, ports, container examination facilities, client services and visa processing sections and international mail facilities.

The strike action will start today at airports in Cairns, Townsville, Perth, Darwin and Adelaide before the major airports in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and other locations join in on Thursday for a 24-hour strike.

The ATO have asked Migration Alliance to distribute the following information:

"To Migration Alliance, 

I work in the Public Relations team at the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and I am contacting you today to inform you about a series of education sessions on tax obligations for foreign investors. We are running these sessions in response to community feedback, and would like to extend an invitation to any members of your association who would be interested.