Australian Immigration Daily News

Here’s a quiz to get your brains working at the start of the week, and to get ready to face the mysteries of the Migration Act that you will have to cope with. 

And the good news is that however you answer, no one else will know! You can keep your thoughts entirely to yourself, and your answer won’t be marked or broadcast to the rest of the world, no matter what it is! 

So here is the question: 

Readers of the Migration Alliance Website will recall that we posted an article on 20 March of this year, following reports in the media indicating that the government of Western Australia had apparently “frozen” the entire Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme in Perth. 

This “freeze” was apparently made to implement a campaign promise that was made by Mark McGowan, who was elected as Premier of Western Australia on 11 March 2017.

Our Migration Alliance colleague Ross Ahmadzi reported in an article that was posted on 26 June 2017 that Prime Minister Turnbull has now written to Premier Magowan to confirm that the Federal Government has agreed to remove the Perth region from the RSMS visa programme.

The difficulty of challenging a decision by the Minister not to revoke the mandatory cancellation of a visa on character grounds is illustrated  by a recent decision of the Full Court, handed down at the end of April: Marzano v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2017) FCAFC 66 (26 April 2017).

Once again, this case shows that residence in Australia since early childhood, and personal circumstances that provide “compassionate” circumstances that weigh in favour of revocation of the cancellation decision may not be sufficient to “rescue” the visa holder’s right to remain in Australia.

And the case also shows that it may be very hard to come up with strong legal arguments to challenge a decision by the Minister not to revoke the cancellation.  In fact, the case shows that sometimes the legal representatives of a visa holder may be reduced to a position of “grasping at straws”, and that the “straws” are not strong enough to persuade the courts to overturn the decision not to revoke.

Is it possible to salvage a visa application for employer-sponsored employment after the original nomination has been refused, simply by lodging a new nomination of the proposed position?

Can lodging a new nomination enliven the Tribunal’s jurisdiction to hear an application for review of a decision by the Department to refuse the visa application?

Is this a way of solving a situation where no application has been made to the Tribunal for merits review of the refusal of the nomination of the position?

Just how important is it for Registered Migration Agents to keep records concerning their communications with the Department, whether by email or by post?

Especially when the communication in question is intended to notify the Department of a change in the agent’s contact details for the purposes of receiving notification of a decision to refuse a visa application.

The lesson is illustrated by a case that was recently decided in the Federal Court, Bui v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2017) FCA 714 (23 June 2017).