Australian Immigration Daily News

We have seen in many of the articles on this blog that Public Interest Criterion 4020 poses a gigantic risk to visa applications.

In many ways, PIC 4020 is the migration law equivalent of being bitten by a funnel web spider or a brown snake: in other words, typically pretty darn fatal unless you can quickly find an antidote!

Similarly, we have also seen that section 501 of the Migration Act can, in its own way, be absolutely toxic to the legal entitlement of the holder of a visa to remain in Australia.  To put it bluntly, the cases suggest that if a person commits a serious criminal offence that results in a sentence of imprisonment of 12 months or more, it’s a pretty sure bet that they’re going to get their visa cancelled.  And it’s going to be an awfully tough fight to challenge the visa cancellation in court, because the grounds of successful challenge are very limited.

How useful is the Full Court’s decision in the case of Waensila v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2016) FCAFC 32?

Remember? That’s the decision that was handed down by the Full Court a bit more than 8 months ago, on 11 March 2016.

And when that decision was delivered, it seemed like it had the potential to turn at least a part of migration practice “on its head”.  The part where an applicant is seeking a Partner visa (Subclass 820) while onshore, but no longer holds a substantive visa (and has not held a substantive visa for more than 28 days after her or his last substantive visa ceased to be in force), and thus cannot satisfy the criteria of Schedule 3 of the Migration Regulations.

How should the visa cancellation powers vested in the Minister under the Migration Act be used?

Should a visa holder who commits a serious criminal offence be “thrown out” of Australia, no matter what?

Should that frequently used formulation that: “a person who commits a serious criminal offence should expect to forfeit the privilege of remaining in Australia” be applied uniformly and without exception?

Ain’t the Internet wonderful?

Without the glories of the World Wide Web, which of course was “invented” by former US Vice-President Al Gore (or so he was said to have claimed (we all know that it was actually invented by Donald Trump – if he says so it must be true!)) we wouldn’t have wonderful philosophical questions to ponder, such as: “When is an email received?”. 

Or even better, what does the phrase “at the end of the day”, as used in section 494C(5) of the Migration Act actually mean?

Have you ever had a case where the Department has refused to approve an employer nomination for a Subclass 186 visa under the Employer Nomination Scheme?

In particular, have you had a matter where the nomination was refused because the Department was not satisfied that the sponsoring employer would be able to provide employment to the prospective employee on a full time basis for a period of at least 2 years? 

This requirement applies to nominations under both the Temporary Residence Transition stream and the Direct Entry stream.