The AAT president has warned of delays and backlogs in the migration review decision due to the lack of members while an opinion piece in The Australian suggests that the purge of members may have been due to the tribunals overturning far too many of DIBPs decisions on appeal.

The amalgamation of the Migration Review Tribunal (MRT) - Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) and Social Security Appeals Tribunal (SSAT) with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), is a move that has been described as the biggest shake-up of Australian administrative law in 40 years.

Under the new system, the AAT will hear challenges to government decisions on visa applications and social security benefits, in addition to its existing jurisdiction over workers compensation, disability support, freedom of information requests and veterans’ entitlements.

It is estimated that the new AAT will adjudicate 40,000 applications every year and yet save $7.2 million over four years in “shared back-office functions and property holdings”.

AAT president and Federal Court judge Duncan Kerr will retain leadership of the AAT

What happens when a client thinks that her or his migration agent has submitted an application for one type of visa, when in reality the migration agent has submitted an application for an entirely different type of visa, and the client is not eligible for the visa that has been applied for?  If the application for the visa is refused, and the refusal is then affirmed by the Migration Review Tribunal, can it be said that the review proceedings before the MRT have been “vitiated” so that the decision by the Tribunal should be “overturned”?

These questions were considered by the Federal Circuit Court of Australia in a case that was decided toward the end of last year, Singh v Minister for Immigration & Anor, (2014) FCCA 2867 (16 December 2014). The Court answered them by quoting from an earlier judgment of the Full Court of the Federal Court, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs v SZFDE, (2006), in which Justice French made the following observations:

“There are sound policy reasons why a person whose conduct before an administrative tribunal has been affected to her or her detriment, by bad or negligent advice, should not be heard to complain that the detriment was unfair in any sense that would vitiate the decision made”.

TAFE NSW has released a 457 visa contributions report on Training Benchmark A and Training Benchmark B.  To read the full report click on the link below:

457_Visa_report---sydney-tafe.pdf

By Liana Allan (MARN 0104178) and Kristie Morgan (MARN 1068715)

Regional employers are crying out for workers in regional areas.  Regional Victoria is experiencing a lack of local talent in the following areas:

1. Hospitality - chefs and cooks

The department of immigration's (DIBP's) website states that the processing period for the non-contributory parent visa is now 30 years. The previous indication was 13 years. Has the quota dropped for this parent visa category or have more people desperately joined the queue in light the of the shock from the government’s attempt to repeal the visa class?

Thirty or 13 years, the wait is too long. Unless families can contribute some $100,000 and get on the contributory parent visa class which has a processing period of under 2 years, family reunions involving parents look virtually impossible.

This issue together with the difficulties faced by migrants in obtaining permanent residency were among the reasons cited for the fall in Australia’s score in the latest assessment of Australia’s performance in resettling migrants according to a report by the global ranking index, MIPEX.

The Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) is a unique tool which measures policies to integrate migrants in all EU Member States, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and the USA.

Developers of the index, use 167 policy indicators to “create a rich, multi-dimensional picture of migrants’ opportunities to participate in society. The index is a tool to evaluate and compare what governments are doing to promote the integration of migrants in all the countries analysed.