The department of immigration has stepped up its scrutiny of working holiday visa applicants after detecting that many applicants have been defrauding the system by making applications under different identities.

In one case an applicant acquired five Working Holiday visas illegally by using different identities. DIBPs prevailing systems were unable to detect the fraud until the fifth application according to a DIBP media release.

DIBP states that it started scrutinising these visa applications more closely for identity fraud in the recent years after it became aware that some young visitors were unlawfully trying to use the Working Holiday visa (subclass 417)—the most popular visa for younger visitors to Australia—to secure ongoing work.

The visa is available to nationals from 19 countries and regions and can be used to visit, study and work in Australia for up to a year. If a Working Holiday visa holder spends three months or more doing designated approved work in regional Australia during their visit, they may be eligible for a second Working Holiday visa for an additional year.

Since 2013, in its efforts to detect people trying to gain unlawful entry to Australia, the department has been using an innovative automated form of discreet profiling that checks every application for a Working Holiday visa.

Migrants need a long-term well-considered strategy if they want to have a realistic chance of obtaining permanent migration to Australia. Rising costs, tougher rules, a stricter enforcement regime and a tight job market could easily derail poorly considered migration plans. With the government preferring temporary visas and forcing tough competition in the capped permanent visa program, engaging professional migration advisers must surely become an part of astute applicants plans.

Statistics indicate that government policy now prefers temporary immigration over permanent migration according to a recent academic article by Professor Jock Collins on www.theconversation.com. He points out that Australia is steadily shifting away from being a country that wanted immigrants and their families and subsequent generations to stay and become part of nation building to a country that prefers temporary migrants.

The OECD’s latest report on global migration indicates that trends in Australian immigration in the past two decades strongly suggest that Australia can no longer be regarded as a settler immigration nation. 2012-13 immigration data shows that 190,000 arrived under the permanent immigration program (or 192,599 when Trans-Tasman migrants are included).

In the same year, 725,043 – or 766,273 including Trans-Tasman migrants – migrants arrived on temporary immigration visas. This included 258,248 on working holiday visas, 259,278 on international student visas and 126,350 on temporary work (skilled) visas.

“This shift of Australia from a settler immigration nation to a temporary migrant nation has been the biggest change in nearly seven decades of post-war immigration history,” notes Jock Collins, Professor of Social Economics, UTS Business School at University of Technology, Sydney. “Yet, remarkably, there has been virtually no debate about it other than understandable concerns about abuses of workers under the temporary 457 visa and of some working holiday makers by unscrupulous employers or agents” says Prof Collins.

With permanent migration quotas amounting to about a quarter of the temporary migrant visa grants (excluding tourists), the figures roughly translate to mean that for every 4 hopeful temporary entrants, only 1 will have a chance of getting permanent residency.

MRT-RRT end of year shutdown

The offices of the Migration Review Tribunal and the Refugee Review Tribunal (the tribunals) will be closed over the Christmas and New Year period. Offices will close from 5.00pm on Wednesday, 24 December 2014 and will reopen from 8.30am on Friday, 2 January 2015.

During this period applications for review can continue to be lodged using the tribunals’ online lodgement facility or by fax.

This morning I visited Mark Robinson SC at his chambers on an unrelated matter.  Whilst we were talking, he showed me a fascinating paper he had written called "Australia’s Papua New Guinea Response to the Boat People Crisis – Legal and Constitutional Perspectives".

Mark Robinson SC  presented the following paper to the ANZAPPL National Conference 20 November 2014.

The paper speaks on an epic constitutional challenge in the High Court of Australia that was argued and determined this year concerning the constitutional validity of Australia’s handling of the “boat people” refugees.