Australian Immigration Daily News

Bridging Visas for many remains a tricky area in the Australian immigration law for a number of reasons.  For example, an applicant may be granted a Bridging Visa, however this Bridging Visa may not come into effect until certain event/s occur.  An applicant may be granted a Bridging Visa ranging from Bridging Visa A to Bridging Visa R.  In general, the further you work down the alphabet, the less beneficial will be the Bridging Visa (with exception to Bridging Visa B) becomes in terms of ability to travel and/or work.

What is a Bridging Visa?

Migration Alliance has been asked to assist an Australian TV station to create a half-hour investigative TV program looking at visa rorts.  The TV station is trying to identify and expose the perpetrators who are making money, but also tell the stories of victims.   They are also working with language programs, so that the stories will also go out in other languages on their language platforms. The idea is to create awareness of the kinds of rorts that are out there, but to also highlight the plight of the victims and the difficulties they might have in getting justice.

The TV station is hoping to talk to victims and see if anyone is willing to share their story.

These are the types of people the TV station is hoping to find:

A few years back, DIBP has made a major announcement to overhaul Australian visa framework to align this framework to our international counterparts.  The goal was to make certain visa requirements redundant for example, the requirement for an applicant to be in or outside Australia on lodgement or grant of the visa, the need for original documents and of course, paper based applications.

Since the announcement, we have seen visa subclasses collapsed and condensed into different categories.  We now have visas with different streams such as the 400 visa which and the 402 visa (rather than separate subclasses for each activity), we have seen the removal of the onshore/offshore requirement for ENS applications and so forth.  This process has in turn benefited both agents as well as visa applicants as it has become much easier to understand and more importantly meet requirements for a particular visa.

Public consultations were instrumental in this simplification process and the consultation process concluded last week on the 15^th September.

Migration Alliance members are invited to the following New Zealand Immigration event on Thursday 12 October 2017.   To register for the event please click here and complete the form on the website, which will register you for the event.  You will be contacted after you have completed the online form at the bottom of the page to confirm that you have been registered to attend.

It’s really amazing when you have a look at the reported cases coming out of the AAT and the Federal Courts.

Based on what is reported on Austlii, it surely appears that visa refusals and visa cancellations on character grounds are becoming a more and more important element of migration law practice.

Is there any way to predict the outcome?