Australian Immigration Daily News

It seems like one of the “hot topics” in migration law is establishing that the position for which a 457 visa applicant has been nominated is “genuine”. 

And it seems like the reason that this requirement has been so controversial is because it allows scope for a huge amount of subjective judgment on the part of a case officer, or, for that matter, the Tribunal, to determine what is genuine, and what is not. 

Is this one of those situations where the answer to the question of whether a position is genuine is: “I’ll know it when I see it?”  

My colleague Adrian Joel has informed me that because of a failure of DIBP to register a legislative instrument in more or less the same manner as they failed to do in the case of Singh v. Minister for immigration & Anor [2012] FMCA 145 and subsequently followed in Sharma v. Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs & Citizenship [2014] FCCA 2821; that all applications lodged between 10/1999 and 16 March 2016 are INVALID.

The relevant legal problems turns on the failure of DIBP to in effect record all of its Forms as "Approved Forms" via the mechanism of a legislative instrument in the period from 10/1999 to 16 March 2016.

That being the case if Schedule 1 requires an applicant to lodge an application on an approved form then absent any approved form during the relevant period, that defect would render the application INVALID.

Migrants from the UK are feeling the financial implications of the recent EU referendum following the so called ‘BREXIT’.

As stock markets and currencies fell around the world, nothing felt it more than the Great British Pound (GBP). Sterling is currently at a 31 year low against the US Dollar and has lost more than 10% in value against the Australian Dollar over the last 2 weeks.

The Pound is currently at an 18 month low against the Aussie at $1.74, remember during September last year it was at $2.20, so that is a 20% fall in value in under 12 months.

Is it risky to rely on facsimile transmissions as a means of communicating with the AAT? 

You better believe it is! 

Or as my good friend from America, Sarah Palin, former vice presidential candidate and reality TV star, would put it emphatically: “You betcha!!!” 

Is the character test always fatal to a visa application? 

For example, suppose that you have a client who has a “substantial criminal record” within the meaning of section 501(6) of the Migration Act, as a result of having been convicted of an offence and having been sentenced to imprisonment for a period of 12 months, with the sentence suspended for 2 years? 

What if the offence was described as “assault occasioning bodily harm”?