Australian Immigration Daily News

In this day and age, serial monogamy is not all that unusual, is it? 

In fact, one need go no further than “the Donald”, the famous, or infamous, Donald Trump, however you would prefer it, to find an example of a person who is on his third marriage (and one may also note that two of these wives, the first, Ivana, and the third, Melania, were both born outside the United States). 

And of course, one need go no further than King Henry VIII to find another example of a well-known person who was inclined toward serial monogamy (let’s not forget that HRH played a rather significant role in all of this, by divorcing two wives and beheading two!). 

Imagine that you have a client who is seeking a Temporary Partner visa. 

Imagine further the following scenario: 

Your client is lawfully married to a woman who is an Australian citizen. 

Imagine that you have arrived at your office one fine autumn morning, and are happily drinking your coffee and reading the case law updates on the Migration Alliance blog when your phone rings and you get an urgent request for help, as follows:

“My partner visa has been cancelled by the Department!! Is there anything you can do to help me?”

And imagine further, that when you ask the potential client why the Department has cancelled his visa, he tells you the following:

Sometimes, when I’m looking at Austlii to prepare an article for this blog, the case that I am reading is so bizarre, outlandish, weird and downright crazy that I nearly fall out of my chair! 

And then I find myself thinking: “Did I really read what I just read? Are my eyes deceiving me? Did my wife sneak something (hallucinogenic?) into my sandwich? What was in the mushrooms that I was grilling for dinner last night!” 

Yep, sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up! And yep, sometimes life, as it plays out in migration cases, is “stranger than fiction”. 

What is the correct interpretation of Regulation 1.20J, which limits the number of times that a person may sponsor another person for a prospective marriage, partner or “extended eligibility” visa?

Suppose, for example, that someone has sponsored two previous spouses to come to Australia prior to the effective date of Regulation 1.20J (1 November 1996): do those previous sponsorships “count” against the limitation (stated in Regulation 1.20J (1)(a)) that a sponsor may have sponsored no more than 1 other person who has received a “relevant permission” to enter Australia?

Can you have sponsored 2 or more previous fiancés/partners/spouses so long as those persons were granted their “relevant permissions” before the effective date?