Editor's Blog

Australia’s good international relations has effectively resulted in the country's passport holders being able to enter 169 countries without a visa, ranking it among the top 10 countries in a survey of the world’s most powerful passports. Perhaps this is the reason why DFAT reports that so many Australian passports go missing each year.

Visa requirements are an interesting but overlooked indicator of international relations. Most countries require non-nationals to get visas before they enter their borders, but the requirements can differ a lot. Countries that are allies often offer each other’s citizens a quick visa on arrival. For countries that are not so friendly, a visitor may have to provide entry and exit information, a letter of invitation, and even list all of the clubs they belonged to in high school — as well as paying a hefty fee.

The Henley & Partners Visa Restrictions Index is a global ranking of countries according to the travel freedom that their citizens enjoy. The index is produced in cooperation with the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which maintains the world’s largest database of travel information, and is published annually

Small businesses are facing tough times and the department of immigration is making it harder for them to survive. Many in the industry are saying, DIBP has a policy that discriminates against applications especially by small businesses for hiring foreign workers under the sc457 program.

What is it the purpose of the CSOL which after consultation and consideration at various levels of government and the community has determined essential skills required by Australian companies right now when a DIBP case-officer, despite being presented with a company’s submissions about the realities of its commerce and skills needs, are allowed to make ‘subjective decisions’ about whether the company needs those skills? Are case-officers trained management consultants?

What again is the purpose of the TSMIT which many say already sets an unreasonably high minimum salary rate of $53,900 for foreign workers, when case officers can judge - against the face of market research provided by applicants - that the wages paid to foreigners above this level, are still inadequate?

Four weeks of rolling-strike action over pay conditions is set to further delay visa processing by the department of immigration. Airports around Australia could come to a stand-still in the next few weeks.

Thousands of civil servants are expected to join the strike action from 21 March 2016 unless the Government engaged in genuine talks to end the row over pay and conditions, notes a report in the ABC.

"We've been trying to resolve this for months and we're calling on Prime Minister Turnbull to give us someone to sit down and talk to…He has nearly three weeks to avoid this strike action, but we seriously think it could be resolved in three days if they're willing to talk about fixing this mess." Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU)  secretary Nadine Flood said.

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The Federal court has heard that 99.21% of applications on immigration matters were thrown out on the first court date, by federal circuit court judge Alexander ‘Sandy’ Street.

Judge Street is facing a judicial review on claims of ‘apprehended bias’. The court has heard that the judge rejected over 252 appeals of the 254 migration cases he considered over a period of six months. Applicants are presenting these statistics to show that those seeking a judicial review of migration decisions had virtually no chance of succeeding in Judge Street's court.

Barrister Jay Williams has told the chief justice, James Allsop, Justice John Griffiths and Justice Susan Kenny there was “a one in 10 chance before other judges and a 1 in 100 chance before this judge” of having an immigration ruling overturned, according to a report in The Guardian

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Recently, two cases were reported to the Migration Alliance where RMAs unexpectedly discovered that the visa status on the record on the department of immigration’s Visa Entitlement Verification Online (VEVO) database were later held to be ‘incorrect’ by the case-officer, thus resulting in refusals of their applications.

An RMA in Perth was shocked when the case-officer in a parent visa application produced a different set of VEVO results for an applicant from the one the RMA initially found on the department’s system which claims to provide ‘a fast and convenient way” to check “current visa details and conditions”

“This is intriguing” the RMA wrote to the Migration Alliance recently, “We did a VEVO check before lodging [the] application. It [did] not show condition 8503 on the entitlement…the only condition listed was No work (8101).” The condition 8530 means that the holder will not, after entering Australia, be entitled to be granted a substantive visa, other than a Protection visa.

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