Australian Immigration Daily News

What type of integrity checks are in place to assure that a visa applicant is actually the person who has taken an IELTS test? 

What kind of evidence might the Department or the Tribunal rely upon to determine that an IELTS test result report that is submitted is a “bogus document” and thus trigger the application of Public Interest Criterion 4020 to result in the refusal of the visa application? 

Or to put it another way, how can a person who is attempting to carry out a fraud, by using an “imposter” to take elements of the English language proficiency test for her/him, get “tripped up” so that the fraud comes to light? 

Wow. Just plain wow.

Here’s the story of a decision by the AAT that was so unbelievably bad that it’s hard to believe it could ever have been made. But It was. The decision was so shockingly bad that it is enough to make a reader turn “white as a ghost” from total shock and amazement.

And yet: this decision was not overturned until the case reached the Full Court.

Who said “there ain’t no cure for the summertime blues?”  (Well if you happened to be around in the late 1960’s, or a fan of rock music, you’ll know that it was the British band, “The Who” who made a song with those lyrics very famous!)

Or, if you are not a “flower child” from the 1960’s, you can nonetheless find a cure for the summertime blues by reading the recent decision of the Full Court in the case of He v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2017) FCAFC 206 – or, just keep reading the discussion below.

The decision was handed down on 14 December 2017, and it really was an “early Christmas present”!

It seems pretty evident that the present Minister for Immigration and Border Protection has an “agenda” to exclude persons who have been associated with “outlaw motorcycle gangs” from Australia, by exercising the visa cancellation powers under section 501 of the Migration Act. 

Another case that exemplifies this apparent agenda was recently decided by the Full Court of the Federal Court, Muggeridge v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2017) FCA (8 December 2017). 

Perhaps an initial, superficial reading of the facts might tend to suggest that the visa cancellation was justified: 

When it comes to the Department’s administration of Australia’s migration legislation, it is never safe to say that “there is nothing new under the Sun”, or that astonishing, amazing and in fact downright stupid/ridiculous things cannot happen!

Because they do!

Here’s a prime example, which we learned about from our colleague and friend Dr Sirous Ahmadi, the principal of Visayab Migration Services.