Australian Immigration Daily News

Offshore detention remains one of the most controversial issues in Australia. Although the government won the latest challenge to its regime of detaining asylum seekers offshore while their humanitarian visa claims were being considered, the High Court of Australia recently warned,“The commonwealth is not authorised ... to support an offshore detention regime which is not reasonably necessary to achieve that purpose.”

In its first decision of the year, the High Court of Australia ruled in favour of the government’s offshore detention policy effectively allowing the government to continue maintaining several offshore detention centres. Some 267 people - including 91 children - who were brought to Australia for medical treatment are now likely to be returned to an offshore detention centre. The federal government has spent more than $1 billion this financial year to house about 2200 asylum seekers in offshore detention centres.

However, the High Court has warned that the government cannot create a regime of indefinite detention offshore, that there are limits to its power to hold people and that it cannot allow people to languish in detention while interminable ‘processing’ drags on, according to a report in The Guardian which anticipates that more legal challenges will follow given the decision.

Is there anything you can do to assure that your client gets a “fair hearing” before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal? 

Suppose you accompany your client to the hearing, and it is apparent from the beginning that the “handwriting is already on the wall”?  In other words, is there anything you can do when it appears that the Tribunal Member has already made up her/his mind on the merits, and that no evidence, and no submission, could possibly sway the member to determine the visa application in your client’s favour? 

Or suppose the nature of the questioning conducted by the Member appears “unsympathetic” and “insensitive” to your client’s circumstances, what then? 

The first time Australia introduced detention was in 1991 at Villawood in Sydney and Port Headland in Western Australia. The mandatory detention came in 1992 and the government at the time said it was to prevent the country from too many unauthorized refugee boats from South East Asia that can possibly test their resolve and capacity to ensure that immigration takes place within a planned and controlled framework.

Today, the situation has worsened and the most vulnerable people are arriving from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sri Lanka, and Australia has been imprisoning refugees on remote Pacific Islands, setting a bad example of lack of human sympathy for the rest of the world to follow. With Europe now struggling to control a huge number of refugees coming from the Middle East and Africa, walls and fences are being built across the continent in an attempt to keep them out.

Australia has previously implemented remote detention camps with high fences for the isolation of the inhabitants.

Suppose you have a client who has entered Australia on a visa that is subject to a “no further stay”  condition (Condition 8503) but the client has managed to persuade the Department to “waive” that condition on the basis that “compelling and compassionate” circumstances have developed. 

Will the fact that the client has been able to get Condition 8503 waived also enable the client to get a waiver of Schedule 3  criteria on the basis that there are compelling reasons not to apply those criteria?  

In other words, if someone succeeds in getting Condition 8503 waived, does it mean that they are “automatically” entitled to a waiver of Schedule 3?  

The Australian Immigration authorities have deported more criminals with mental health conditions back to New Zealand without warning the officials in the country about the state of their minds. These people are dangerous, as they have been involved in criminal activities in the past and are clinically insane.

About the Deportees

In December 2014, the Australian Immigration authorities tightened immigration laws under section Act 501 that stated that the visas of anyone with more than 12 months of imprisonment or for people who have committed offences against children are to be deported immediately.

As a result, New Zealand citizens being deported have increased six fold and around 1000 people are to be deported in the next 5 years. Most of the people sent back to New Zealand are criminals who have served their time in jail in Australia or after stints in immigration detention centers. A majority of these people have lived in Australia almost all of their lives and do not have any links with friends or family in New Zealand.