Australian Immigration Daily News

On the eve of ANZAC Day, the peak tourism bodies of Australia and New Zealand launched a lobby urging the migration ministers on either size of the Tasman to develop a single tourist visa for travel to the two countries.

The move comes after a New Zealand government study found that 43 per cent of the 7578 single trans-Tasman visas granted during the Cricket World Cup last year were to Chinese nationals, although China did not have a team in competition.

The tourism chiefs of both countries say that granting entry to both Australia and New Zealand, could encourage more travellers to make long-haul flights to the region. Now, citizens from the two nations have reciprocal work and travel rights, but international tourists need to obtain separate visas for each country.

There are times when you read some of the migration cases that are reported in the judgments of the Federal courts, you can feel nothing but the most profound and heartfelt sympathy for the visa applicant. 

Take the case of Bhalla v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2016) FCA 395 that was handed down this past Friday, 22 April, for example: 

The applicant in this case was an Indian woman who had married her husband, an Australian citizen, through an arranged marriage, in 2009. She claimed that following the marriage, she was kept in virtual servitude in her in-laws home, mistreated, made to cook and clean and was not permitted to see her parents unaccompanied. 

A complaint about the conduct of a senior migration agent has recently been submitted to the Migration Alliance which provides a graphic illustration of the type of client interaction that we believe all Registered Migration Agents should be extremely careful to avoid. 

The story, as reported to MA, is that the agent had been engaged to assist a same-sex couple with a partner visa application. 

Unfortunately, after the applicant's medical exam had been completed, the agent took it upon herself to call the applicant and to conduct a conversation with him while the applicant was using a speaker  phone at his work place. 

Despite only 10 visa’s being granted since the launch of the revamped Significant Investor Visa program last July, Australian Trade and Investment minister Steven Ciobo still believes there is nothing wrong with the changes and expects interest in the program to pick-up.

Fund managers however say the drastic fall in interest in the program which had 1,544 applications and 590 visa grants in the final 12 months under the previous version is due to several issues including complexity of the new version and a requirement that venture capital be repaid after four years — half the usual investment cycle in the industry.

According to a report in The Australian, several large asset managers active with the previous version of the program haven’t developed products that comply with the revamped one. Some smaller firms are put off by the cost of anticorruption checks on prospective clients. Given the four-year-turnaround rule, there is also the challenge of finding emerging-company investments that make a rapid return and can be sold quickly.

How can you tell if the Administrative Appeals Tribunal has made a jurisdictional error in a partner visa case? 

That is, of course, a critical question.  Because if you are able to identify a jurisdictional error, then you can advise your client that she/he would have reasonable prospects for success in a judicial review proceeding, and that it would make sense to file an application with the Federal Circuit Court to try to get the decision of the AAT “quashed”, or overturned. 

A decision that was handed down earlier this week by Judge Nicholls, in the case of Butterworth v Minister for Immigration & Anor (2016) FCCA 876 (18 April 2016) does provide some very helpful guidance about when a jurisdictional error has occurred.  So it is definitely a case that is worth knowing about.