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Immigration Daily News Widow Refused Visitor Visa. Cruel. Cold. Heartless. Disgraceful.Australian Immigration Daily News
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Widow Refused Visitor Visa. Cruel. Cold. Heartless. Disgraceful.
There are times when you see news stories about visa decisions that have been made by the Department that are so amazing, crazy and lacking in compassion and common sense that you literally cannot believe the words that you are reading.
That you cannot believe that the government, in the sound administration of the migration legislation, could possibly have made such a decision.
That gives new definition to the concept of “Wednesbury unreasonableness” – a decision that is literally so unreasonable that no reasonable decision-maker would have made it.
That makes your blood boil that such a decision could possibly have been made.
But here you have it.
Have a look at today’s Sydney Morning Herald and you’ll see this article, under the byline of reporter Michael Koziol: “Australia refuses to grant grieving wife a visa for refugee husband’s funeral”.
Let that sink in for a minute. Your eyes haven’t deceived you. That is what the headline really says.
And it gets even worse. Here’s the story as reported in the article.
On 16 April 2017, Asghar Ali, who was 39 years old, and who originally arrived in Australia by boat as a Hazara refugee from Pakistan, died in Latrobe Regional Hospital (of causes not discussed in the Herald article). Mr Ali was apparently a permanent resident of Australia, as the news article in the Herald reports that he had been granted a Protection visa.
On 23 April 2017, his wife, Masooma, who the article reports is living in Quetta, Pakistan with the couple’s three young children, applied for a Visitor visa in order to “see my husband for the last time”.
And yet, and yet, 5 weeks later, the Department refused the application for the Visitor visa! 5 weeks to make a totally wrongheaded, cold hearted decision!
Why?
According to the article, the reasons for refusal were that Masooma did not satisfy the “genuine temporary entrant” requirements, and were along the following lines:
“Although I am very sympathetic to your desire to be present at your husband’s funeral during this difficult time, I am not satisfied that the compassionate grounds outweigh the concerns I have over your compliance with the conditions that will be placed on any visa granted to you.”
And this, that the Department needed to “consider Masooma’s personal circumstances and the relative attractiveness of Australia compared to Pakistan”.
Although the article doesn’t say, one can presume that it is likely that Masooma would have travelled to Australia for her husband’s funeral without her children, and that she would have left them in the care of a relative or trusted friend in Quetta.
If so, would there have been any realist possibility that she would have abandoned her children in Pakistan?
Is it really possible that the Department could have genuinely believed that a grieving widow who wanted to come dot Australia to say her farewells to her dead husband intended to “rort the system”?
Really? Really really really?
According to the Herald article, this isn’t the first time that this sort of disgraceful fiasco has occurred.
The article states that:
“Last year the body of an Afghan refugee, Qurban Ali, languished in a Melbourne morgue for more than seven months after the immigration department refused his wife’s visa application for similar reasons.”
That is positively ghoulish.
And the migration agent in the Qurban Ali case, Marion Le, is quoted as saying that this type of situation is “not uncommon” and that “It’s happening all the time.”
And the Department’s view, through a spokesperson?
In my personal opinion, bureaucratic gobbledygook in the circumstances: “The likelihood of an applicant overstaying or seeking to remain in Australia is a matter that must be assessed”.
My opinion is that the Department cannot seriously believe that.
Assess all you want, but anyone with an ounce of compassion would not refuse a Visitor visa to a widow seeking to see her dead husband for a final time.
No one.
But the Department did.
The Department may somehow be operating under the impression that this type of facially unreasonable decision is impervious to review, being an offshore application for a Visitor visa.
I wonder though, and my lawyer’s instinct tells me, that this type of decision-making, such as it is, might very well be subject to challenge in the Federal courts.
One would hope that there will be a torrent of negative publicity about this case that will cause the Department to reverse this horrid decision.
Today.
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Comments
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Tuesday, 06 June 2017concern of immigration is unfortunately justified as the expectation protection visa/s would be applied for in this case which is a rort the current government are applying the law without compassion which should be applied on a case by case basis but the law is still the law if there was no abuse of this process then many of these applications would be successful
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Wednesday, 07 June 2017
I too have been consulted by a grieving family member who wanted to sponsor the deceased's person's widow to attend funeral and were refused. Couldn't help. You take the matter to judicial review and keep the body frozen??? This government workers are heartless and I don't think bad publicity is going to change anything. Interestingly, I am now involved in a Citizenship refusal on character grounds. Obviously, the Minister for Immigration is the respondent. I was extensively reading about what it means to be of 'good character' for citizenship purposes. It involves 'distinguishing right from wrong' and 'behaving in an ethical manner'. How ethical are our public servants? How ethical is it to place a 65 year old visa applicant in a 50 year queue? How ethical is it to stop processing partner visas where sponsors arrived on boats? And how ethical is it to stop processing citizenship applications for boat arrivals (some have been waiting for 2 years and still no outcome). And finally, how ethical is it to refuse a visitor visa to a mother who wants to visit her son in Australia and who has a history of visa compliance in Canada where her daughter and grandchildren live by saying: 'you have more reason to stay in Australia than you have to stay in Canada'. You would think - because of what? weather? kangaroos? or is it because a daughter and grandchildren are less valuable descendants than a son??? They wouldn't tell you and you can't get into their heads to find out. All you know that all of the above are wrong and unethical. Maybe they all should be stripped of Au citizenship on the basis of not distinguishing right from wrong?
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The Labour Government used to turn a blind eye and grant the visitor visas in these situations knowing the families would obviously apply for a protection visa. the families already had partner visas lodged anyway so I presume Immigration did not see it is as such a huge issue that the family would apply for protection - the compelling grounds definitely out weighed everything. We assisted with three or four visitor visa applications in such tragic circumstances but then change of government and compassion went out the window.
we have also had partner visas with this same cohort of clients, where the main applicant has died thus meaning all the kids are no longer eligible for partner visa and then suddenly we find some of the children cannot even change to a dependent child visa because they have no turned 18 and being refugees they are not studying full time so not regarded as dependent children;
Families are being broken up and destroyed all over the place and the sponsors in Australia are being left broken mental health wrecks. in the end it is more cost to the Government NOT to reunite families rather than destroy them and then have to pay disability pensions for the rest of the sponsors life.