As a lawyer, I have often found that I can learn a whole lot more by reading cases where “things went wrong” than cases where “everything went swimmingly” and someone “routinely” won their case. 

The cases where problems caused someone to lose in court can teach us a lot about the types of issues that can cause a visa application to fail. And so if we know about those problems, hopefully we can avoid them when we deal with our own cases. Or at least figure out if there’s any guidance we can give our clients to help them mitigate the problems with their applications, and improve their chances of getting a visa.  Or at least be able to advise our clients about the potential pitfalls or “landmines” in their cases, so they can know about the possible risk they face and make an informed judgment about whether they want to go ahead with the application notwithstanding the risks.  

In this regard, a recent case from the Federal Circuit Court – Zaoud v Minister for Immigration & Anor (2015) FCCA 3138 (25 November 2015) – makes for useful reading. 

A Melbourne service station has been ordered to pay fines of over $92,000 for underpaying 2 Indian workers some $111,000 as well as breaching pay-slip and record-keeping obligations.

Two console operators at the BP service station on Clyde Road at Berwick were paid as little as $10 an hour for over 4 years while they were holding temporary visas. From the statement released by the Fair Work Ombudsman, it seems that they started proceedings via the Ombudsman after they were granted permanent residence.

Following legal action by the Fair Work Ombudsman, service station operator Liquid Fuel Pty Ltd was fined $79,537 by the Federal Circuit Court. Husband-and-wife managers Xin Zhang and Linda Qu have also each been fined $4504 and a penalty of $3861 imposed against company director Nian Li, who is Ms Qu’s father.

Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James says a decision was made to commence legal action because of the blatant nature of the underpayments and the involvement of vulnerable overseas workers.

According to the FWO the 2 workers were paid flat rates ranging from $10 to $17 an hour, resulting in underpayment of their minimum hourly rates, casual loadings and penalty rates for overtime, weekend and public holiday work.

With over 30,000 small business clients across Australia, BizCover is focussed solely on insurance for small to medium business and have therefore developed a deep understanding of the needs of Australia’s small businesses.

Our Offer: BizCover offers Professional Indemnity specifically designed for Registered Migration Agents (RMAs) from AIG Australia.  BizCover has been working with Migration Alliance for over year six years with more than 1,500 RMA’s holding PI through BizCover.

We have negotiated with AIG to provide Registered Migration Agents with a policy that meets all the Office of the MARA requirements, at market leading prices. Members of Migration Alliance receive an exclusive discount of 38% off the premium.. Quotes can be obtained quickly. Quotes can be gotten quickly and policies can be bought online 24x7 or by calling our team on 1300 249 268. We can also provide RMAs with Public Liability, Office insurance and Cyber Insurance.

The AAT has asked Migration Alliance to distribute the following message:

On 1 July 2015, the Migration Review Tribunal, Refugee Review Tribunal (MRT-RRT) and Social Security Appeals Tribunal (SSAT) were merged with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). The AAT now plans to retire the website addresses of the former tribunals:

• Migration Review Tribunal – Refugee Review Tribunal: http://www.mrt-rrt.gov.au
• Social Security Appeals Tribunal: http://www.ssat.gov.au

The content of these sites is now fully incorporated into the AAT’s website: http://www.aat.gov.au. All pages will have aat.gov.au addresses and any users accessing the old web addresses will be automatically redirected to the relevant page on the AAT website.

In my most recent article last week, I made some observations about how frustrating, even heartbreaking, it can be when the Department and the Tribunal assess a partner visa application with a skeptical, perhaps “cynical” eye.  

It would be hard to imagine anything much worse, in the context of migration law, than for people who genuinely love each other and want to spend their lives together in Australia, to have their partner visa refused because the Department does not accept that a relationship is genuinely genuine.  As RMAs, a big part of our job is to help people’s dreams come true. So how disappointing and devastating must it be when a legitimate partner visa application gets “knocked back”? 

At the same time, we all recognize that the Department does have a legitimate task to do in relation to partner visas.  Unfortunately, not every partner visa application is the product of a genuine relationship. And it surely can’t be argued that the Department has a perfectly proper role to play in “separating the wheat from the chaff” by screening out partner visa applications where the relationship is not genuine.