Australian Immigration Daily News

Suppose you have a client who is seeking a further student visa to remain in Australia to pursue further studies.

Suppose also that the student visa application has been refused by the Department, and the Tribunal has affirmed the refusal of the visa application on the basis that the Tribunal is not satisfied that “the applicant intends genuinely to stay in Australia”.

Does that outcome necessarily mean that all hope is lost for the applicant, that the case is over, and that you need to tell the applicant that it is time to pack her bags and prepare to return to her home country?

Under what circumstances can an applicant lose the right to appear at a hearing before the Tribunal?

Does a failure to give information, comments or response to a written invitation from the Tribunal within the time period specified by the Tribunal always result in the forfeiture of the right to a hearing?

This very important question concerning the procedural rights of applicants before the Tribunal was “re-visited” last week in a case that was decided by the Full Court of the Federal Court, Singh v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2017) FCAFC 67 (27 April 2017).

The Migration Alliance has received a report about a bizarre, strange, astounding and insane situation from one of our colleagues!

Here’s the story:

A person who was charged with a criminal offence, and who out on bail and awaiting sentence in about a month’s time, approached our colleagues for advice and assistance.

If it wasn’t already clear enough, a decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court that was handed down yesterday, 26 April 2017, emphasizes just how excruciatingly difficult it is to challenge a decision of the Minister to refuse to revoke the mandatory cancellation of a visa on character grounds.

In the vast majority of cases, challenging such decisions by the Minister will have a degree of difficulty analogous to trying to push a huge boulder up a very steep hill.

In order to successfully overturn a decision to refuse to revoke the cancellation of a visa in Federal Court, the visa holder must show that the decision was “infected” by jurisdictional error.  There is no such thing as “merits review” of the refusal to revoke the mandatory cancellation. And the grounds for establishing jurisdictional error are extremely narrow.

The Migration Alliance has learned that Angela Julian-Armitage, the President of our sister organisation, the Migration Institute of Australia, appeared on the national ABC news on 20 April 2017 and has said that she "doesn't have a big issue with the changes" and that the changes amount to no more than "re-branding" and "shoring" up of the temporary skilled migration programme.

It should be noted that during this interview, Ms Julian-Armitage was apparently speaking in her official capacity as the President of the MIA, and was not stating her personal views.

If you'd like to see the full interview you can watch it on You Tube through this link.