Australian Immigration Daily News

OK everyone, are you ready for a quiz? 

No excuses! You’re not getting out of this one just because it’s a gorgeous day in Sydney! 

So put on your thinking caps and sharpen your pencils! This is “open-book” and better still, if you cheat (!!) I won’t tell anyone! 

As we have seen over the last year, the Minister has been (very) actively using the powers given under the Act to personally cancel the visas of non-citizens who have committed serious criminal offences and who, as a result, do not pass the character test. 

And recent decisions from the Full Court in the cases of Minister for Immigration and Border Protection v Stretton and Minister for Immigration  and Border Protection v Eden have forcefully brought home the fact that the potential grounds for challenging a cancellation decision are really quite narrow, and thus the prospects for success in contesting a cancellation are commensurately “poor”. 

In both Stretton and in Eden, the Full Court reversed decisions by Judge Logan of the Federal Circuit Court in Queensland where His Honour had ruled that the visa cancellations were essentially “disproportionate” and therefore “legally unreasonable”. Judge Logan had used a pithy analogy in describing those Ministerial decisions, equating the visa cancellations to “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”. 

What is the correct interpretation of the term “main business” in Regulation 1.11? 

This is not merely an academic question, of interest only to those who wish to delve into the arcane and Byzantine intricacies of migration law. 

No, the question has genuine, real world, practical importance for people who have held Provisional Business Skills visas (subclass 163) and who, after several years of conducting their businesses in Australia, are seeking Residence Business Skills visas (subclass 892). 

Exactly what does a statistical analysis of a judge's decisions mean? 

Suppose you knew that a particular judge of the Federal Circuit Court had ruled in favour of the Department 99.21% of the time (in 252 out of 254 cases).

What conclusions would you be likely to make if you saw that your client's judicial review application was listed before that judge? 

Imagine that you have arrived at your office one fine autumn morning, and are happily drinking your coffee and reading the case law updates on the Migration Alliance blog when your phone rings and you get an urgent request for help, as follows:

“My partner visa has been cancelled by the Department!! Is there anything you can do to help me?”

And imagine further, that when you ask the potential client why the Department has cancelled his visa, he tells you the following: