The pressure is on for both applicants and tribunal members to help ensure that migration and refugee review cases are dealt with quickly.

Last month, AAT President Duncan Kerr warned that “Without sufficient numbers of members being appointed to the new Social Services, Child Support and Migration Review Divisions of the AAT, the work required in those divisions will suffer delayed hearing and backlogs.”

In a move to help clear the backlog of cases in the migration and refugee division of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), the AAT’s President has issued practice directions to encourage quicker decisions.

The President’s directions on Conducting Migration and Refugee Reviews ‘encourage’ members and staff of the tribunal ‘to facilitate accessible, fair, just, economical, informal, quick and proportionate conduct’ of cases.

The directions specifically encourage oral decisions where possible but require that a record of the decision and reasons must be subsequently issued to both the applicant and the DIBP.

If your clients are taking the TOEFL iBT^® test for skilled migration or other visas, they need to know what to expect on the test, especially the Speaking section. 

What is the Speaking section like?

Police have seized $8.5 million worth of assets, including a 2014 Ferrari, a 2015 Range Rover, six properties and $180,000 in cash; and arrested and charged three men with a series of offences relating to an alleged immigration racket involving Australia Post delivery drivers.

The raids across Melbourne yesterday led to the arrest of Baljit 'Bobby' Singh (pictured right), Rakesh Kumar and Mukesh Sharma (pictured left) who now face charges of “defrauding the Commonwealth and falsifying documents including police checks and student records, in relation to two training colleges.”

“The AFP alleges St Stephen Institute of Technology, owned by Singh and Kumar, and Symbiosis Institute of Technical Education, owned by Sharma, are not providing education, but are in fact being used to source student visas for Indian students who then go to work as posties and parcel deliverers for Australia Post through Singh's labour hire companies. The colleges charge international students fees of up to $10,000 despite allegedly not providing any training,” said the ABC report.

The AFP estimates that students were charged over $9 million in fees while the colleges claimed approximately $2 million in government funding because of their Registered Training Organisation status.

Australia Post management has been implicated and under questioning for contracting the company which apparently had ‘at least a hundred workers…about 60 of them being on student visas’ according to  Joan Doyle, Victorian secretary of the posties' union the CEPU. The company had 16 Auspost contracts, four of which the ABC estimates to be worth $60,000 a month.

If a couple were to come into your office and tell you that they were legally married, had a child together, and had the results of a DNA test confirming that the husband was the father of the child, and they could tell you in advance that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) would accept that their relationship was genuine, would you think to yourself: “There should ultimately be excellent prospects of getting a partner visa approved for these clients?”

Well, perhaps you have heard of the famous song from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta “HMS Pinafore” called: “Things Are Seldom What They Seem”! A recent decision from the AAT, 1409924 (Migration) (2015) AATA 3088 (15 July 2015) provides an illustration (surely in the realm of migration law, but also commonly in daily experience) just how accurate the title of this song really is. Or to put it another way, as RMAs know, “Life can be full of surprises”!

On the surface of things, the story of this couple’s relationship, while not without its complications, seemed straightforward enough. And, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, even if the evidence wasn’t sufficient to satisfy the Department about the genuineness of the relationship, it was strong enough to convince the Tribunal member. The true problem was lurking at a deeper level – the dreaded “Schedule 3”!!!!!

New permanent migrants are more highly educated and have better incomes than both their predecessors and the average Australian, according to a report by the Migration Council of Australia.

Many Australians have not been keeping up with the shift in Australia’s economy away from manufacturing and resources toward a high skilled service economy that is diversified. Australia’s migration policies over the last 2 decades has helped fill this gap “enabling structural changes to unfold relatively seamlessly and supplying the human capital needed for the expansion of technology driven sectors,” noted the MCA paper.

This paper analysed the latest ABS statistical information to gain an in-depth picture of how Australia’s migration program is performing and provides an overview of the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of recent Australian immigrants.

It concluded that, “English language proficiency is the primary determinant for migrants in the labour market, more important than both work experience and formal qualifications…improving English language proficiency is the single most effective method to increase the economic benefit [for new migrants]”.

It notes that migrants with low or no language proficiency have historically faced a 10–20 per cent earnings gap. In contrast, the paper notes that newer migrants with very good English proficiency are thriving in the labour market, outperforming even their native English peers who have been in Australia for decades.

The report warned that the gap between those who can and those who cannot speak English well is growing as the economy prioritises skilled work and high tech service industries and noted that due to both skills and English language ability, there is growing gender disparity with female migrants lagging well behind.