Australian Immigration Daily News

Should there be some form of “merits review” of decisions made personally by the Minister to cancel a person’s visa on character grounds? 

Should someone who has spent most of their life living in Australia as the holder of a permanent residency visa but has not, for whatever reason, obtained Australian citizenship, be subject to visa cancellation and consequent “removal”? 

What if the visa cancellation will have very negative impacts on the visa holder’s family? 

What would you say if a client rang you up with the following scenario:

After coming to Australia on a student visa to do post-doctoral research, his car collided with the wall of a house causing a brick to fall on the head of an occupant of the house. The client told police that another person had been driving the car, but he was “too drunk” to know who that person was. And the client was charged by the police with a motor vehicle offence for “not disclosing the details of the driver”. 

Doesn’t sound too bad yet, does it? 

Imagine that you have a client who is seeking a Temporary Partner visa. 

Imagine further the following scenario: 

Your client is lawfully married to a woman who is an Australian citizen. 

Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction! 

And sometimes, the facts in migration cases are truly out of the ordinary, unusual, or just plain “wacky”! 

And sometimes, a person’s migration history is so “checkered” or questionable that when they encounter problems under the migration legislation, they are left in a position of “grasping at straws” , or trying to “toss arguments at a wall and hoping that one sticks”! 

Suppose the AAT fails to consider certain evidence that is put to it. 

Does that amount to jurisdictional error, by itself? And does it provide a basis to get the decision of the AAT “quashed”, or overturned, in the Federal Circuit Court? 

A recent decision from the Federal Court – Liew v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2016) FCA 172 (2 March 2016) (Judge Rangiah) tells us: “It ain't necessarily so!”