Australian Immigration Daily News

Over the years that I have been writing commentary on Federal court decisions for Migration Alliance, we have seen that as part of its operations, the Department has been running a small “cottage industry” focused on the cancellation of visas on character grounds.

And we have also seen that it has largely been extremely difficult to challenge decisions made personally by the Minister either to cancel a visa on character grounds, or to refuse to revoke a cancellation on character grounds.

This is so because the scope of review in the Federal courts is limited to whether the Minister’s decision has been affected by jurisdictional error.  Visa cancellation decisions made personally by the Minister are not subject to “merits review”, in contrast to cancellation decisions made by a delegate of the Minister, which are reviewable in the AAT. But when the Minister determines to exercise his personal powers to set aside a decision of the AAT, again such decisions by the Minister are not subject to merits review, but can only be set aside on the basis of a jurisdictional error.

These words have been taken from a speech this morning, 7 August 2018, by the Hon Alan Tudge MP, Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs.  The speech was made to the Business Council of Australia in Melbourne.  The speech talks about the case for Skilled Migrants, the Global Talent Scheme and the National Recruitment exercise.

"Australia has been built on migration. Successive waves of migrants have come to our shores, help build our economy and made Australia the greatest multicultural nation on earth.

The journey, however, is never complete. We need to continue to work to constantly improve the quality of our skilled migration intake. We need to always ensure that we are selecting the right people and that there are high expectations of integration upon new arrivals and policies to support that.

South Australia as well as Tasmania Government revised the skilled occupations list over the weekend with Tasmania and South Australia publishing their revised lists earlier today.  

South Australia: 

South Australia specifically highlighted occupations which are now seen as classed as “low availability” including: 

The Migration (Skilling Australians Fund) Charges Act 2018 (the SAF Charges Act) is an Act relating to the ‘nomination training contribution charge’ (the charge) payable by persons who are liable to pay the charge under the Migration Act 1958 (the Migration Act) and the Migration Regulations 1994 (the Migration Regulations).

The charge is imposed on employers who nominate workers for temporary or permanent skilled work visas.

The SAF Charges Act commences on 12 August 2018. Section 7 of the SAF Charges Act imposes the charge payable under section 140ZM of the Migration Act. Section 140ZM is inserted by the Migration (Skilling Australians Fund) Act 2018, which also commences on 12 August 2018.

How severely should the visa cancellation power under the Migration Act be exercised?

Should a non-citizen who has been convicted of supplying a commercial quantity of heroin and who has been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of 5 years and 3 months automatically be “kicked out”?

Suppose that the visa holder has been living in Australia since the age of 5 years old?