Australian Immigration Daily News

Background

PIC 4020 was introduced in 2011 to strengthen the integrity of Australia’s immigration program by detecting and preventing visa fraud.  PIC 4020 provides a ground to refuse to grant a visa where the applicant fails to satisfy the Minister of their identity, or where there is evidence that the visa applicant has given, or caused to be given, a bogus document or information that is false or misleading in relation to:

·         the application for the visa

·         a visa that the applicant held in the period of 12 months before the application was made.

PIC4020 currently applies to all skilled migration, business skills, student, temporary, and family visa caseloads.  The Department proposes to rollout PIC 4020 to those visa subclasses to which PIC 4020 does not yet apply to further strengthen the integrity and protection of Australia’s borders.  These remaining subclasses are the: Distinguished Talent-offshore (Subclass 124); Distinguished Talent-onshore (Subclass 858); Investor Retirement (Subclass 405); Retirement (Subclass 410), Transit (Subclass 771) and Maritime Crew (Subclass 988) visas.

Note that PIC 4020 does not apply to refugee, humanitarian or protection visa applicants and these caseloads will not be impacted by the proposed amendments.

Overview of changesThe proposed changes will amend the current visa Regulations of the above identified visa subclasses to introduce PIC 4020.  These changes will take effect from 9 October 2015.

The amendment will not apply to Distinguished Talent visaapplicants who have met the criteria for grant of the visa on the advice of the Minister responsible for an intelligence or security agency within the meaning of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979 or the Director-General of Security.

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