Australian Immigration Daily News

There has been another important decision from the Full Court of the Federal Court which both clarifies the scope of the Minister’s personal power to cancel a visa on character grounds, and gives further explanation of the concept of “legal unreasonableness”. 

This decision came in the case of Minister for Immigration and Border Protection v Eden (2016) FCAFC, handed down on 9 March. 

Just like the Full Court’s recent decision in Minister for Immigration and Border Protection v Stretton (2016) FCAFC 11, the decision in the Eden case illustrates that visa holders who are seeking to challenge a personal decision by the Minister to cancel a visa on the basis that the cancellation was somehow “disproportionate” in the circumstances are going to face a very (very!) difficult and uphill battle in the courts. 

What is the story if your client submits a bogus IELTS test report in support of an application for a skilled visa? 

Will the client be “up the proverbial creek” without a paddle? (The Migration Alliance blog is a family publication, so I won’t provide the name of the “creek”, but we all know what it is!) 

Well, we are all aware that running afoul of Public Interest Criterion 4020 is not necessarily fatal! 

Sometimes, when I’m looking at Austlii to prepare an article for this blog, the case that I am reading is so bizarre, outlandish, weird and downright crazy that I nearly fall out of my chair! 

And then I find myself thinking: “Did I really read what I just read? Are my eyes deceiving me? Did my wife sneak something (hallucinogenic?) into my sandwich? What was in the mushrooms that I was grilling for dinner last night!” 

Yep, sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up! And yep, sometimes life, as it plays out in migration cases, is “stranger than fiction”. 

Does it matter when “family violence” has occurred? 

Is it open to the Department, or the Tribunal, to consider whether a “genuine” spousal or partner relationship existed at the time that the incident(s) of family violence occurred?  

Is it the case that if a person has been granted a provisional partner visa (Subclass 309 or Subclass 820) that they should be “conclusively presumed” to be in a genuine spousal or partner relationship? 

What is the correct interpretation of Regulation 1.20J, which limits the number of times that a person may sponsor another person for a prospective marriage, partner or “extended eligibility” visa?

Suppose, for example, that someone has sponsored two previous spouses to come to Australia prior to the effective date of Regulation 1.20J (1 November 1996): do those previous sponsorships “count” against the limitation (stated in Regulation 1.20J (1)(a)) that a sponsor may have sponsored no more than 1 other person who has received a “relevant permission” to enter Australia?

Can you have sponsored 2 or more previous fiancés/partners/spouses so long as those persons were granted their “relevant permissions” before the effective date?