Australian Immigration Daily News

Should Australia have a more compassionate, more flexible approach towards asylum seekers? 

Or should it stick with its current approach, under which a person who makes an unsuccessful claim for protection, and who exhausts available reviews through the Tribunal and the Federal courts, is “expected to leave”? 

A report that was broadcast on the ABC’s “Australian Story” program last night, “Gone Girl”, puts a human face on these issues. 

 There are times when you read a migration case and you just shake your head in amazement! 

Because, sometimes, a case is so bad, so hopeless, that you wonder what the case was ever doing in the Tribunal, let alone the Federal courts.  Even worse, when the words that spell doom for the visa holder’s case come straight out of his own mouth.  

A case that had this quality of appearing to be totally “dead on arrival” was just reported on Austlii this month, Singh v Minister for Immigration & Anor (2016) FCCA 1663 (7 July 2016). 

Legal cases can sometimes seem like a tangled mess of yarn!! 

You don’t need to go any farther than the case of Josan v Minister for Immigration & Anor (2016) FCCA 493 (11 March 2016) to understand how true this can be! 

The puzzle in this case involved this (complicated!) question: Suppose the AAT incorrectly finds that an applicant has failed to satisfy PIC 4020, but for other reasons, the applicant is still not entitled to the grant of the visa in question.  

How can you tell whether the Tribunal’s decision-making process has “gone off the rails” and that your client may have strong prospects for success with a judicial review application? 

And under what circumstances can it be said that the Tribunal has a responsibility to make an inquiry and to consider information held in the Department’s files, so that when it fails to make such an inquiry, it can be said that the Tribunal has failed to meet its statutory obligation to conduct a review? 

These very important questions were explored in a decision that was handed down on 15 July 2016 by Justice Neville of the Federal Circuit Court, and which appeared this morning on Austlii: Al Mamun v Minister for Immigration & Anor (2016) FCCA 1777. 

How hard is it to get an application for a Carer visa (Subclass 116) granted? 

Extremely! 

That is in large part due to the fact that under regulation 1.15AA(e), it is necessary to show that the assistance that is sought from the proposed carer cannot reasonably be provided by any other relative of the resident who is already an Australian citizen, permanent resident or eligible New Zealand citizen, and that assistance also cannot reasonably be obtained from “welfare, hospital, nursing or community services in Australia”.