Australian Immigration Daily News

The following information was delivered in a speech today by Philip Lowe, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia:

The increase in Australia's population growth over the past decade is largely due to increased immigration; the rate of natural increase has not changed that much (Graph 2). Over recent times, net overseas migration has, on average, added around 1 per cent to our population each year. The increase from natural sources has averaged around 0.7 per cent per year.

There has been a reasonable amount of year-to-year variation in net overseas migration. Migration increased sharply at the height of the resources boom when demand for skilled labour was very strong, and then subsequently declined as the mining investment boom came to an end. In this way, migration has helped our economy adjust to large swings in the demand for labour. It has also helped address some particular skills shortages.

How interesting!

It seems that there is a never-ending stream of decisions coming out of the Federal Court involving the cancellation of visas on character grounds.

Just yesterday, there was another one, Schmidt v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2018) FCA 1162 (7 August 2018).

Are things always what they seem? Or not?

Is a case that appears to be “dead on arrival” really in fact as lacking in prospects as it seems to be?

Take for example the case of Spano v Minister for Immigration and Anor (2018) FCCA 2049 (3 August 2018) that was decided by Justice Neville in Canberra.

By Svetlana Gunaratne  - Member of Migration Alliance and RMA

Genuine Temporary Entrant (GTE) criterion is applicable to a number of visas:

1. Student and Student Guardian Visas

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.