Australian Immigration Daily News

What is the appropriate relationship between the Department of Immigration and the criminal justice system?

Should the Department be able to effectively “override” a decision made by a magistrate to grant a criminal defendant bail by refusing a criminal justice stay visa, with the consequence that a non-citizen will be held in immigration detention pending determination of her or his criminal case?

What if the person is ultimately determined to be innocent of the charge?  Won’t he or she have been held in immigration detention improperly?

How broad are the Minister's powers to cancel a visa under section 501(3) of the Migration Act?

And how difficult is it to challenge a decision of the Minister? Even where the visa holder has not actually been convicted of any criminal offences, and the cancellation is based on a finding that the visa holder has had a past association with a group or organisation that has been involved in criminal activity? Even where that association was apparently many years in the past?

The unsurprising answer to all of these questions, as illustrated by a decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court that was handed down in February, Taulahi v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection  (2018) FCAFC 22 (19 February 2018) , is that it is "very" or "extremely" hard to challenge a visa cancellation on character grounds, even in the described above.

Is there any way to salvage a client’s situation if a third party submits a bogus document or information that is false and misleading in a material particular to the Department, and Public Interest Criterion 4020 is engaged, leading to the refusal of a visa application? 

Or is PIC 4020 an insurmountable barrier, a complete “brick wall” that there is no way to get around? 

In the wake of the Full Court’s decision last week in my own case, Singh v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, it might seem that PIC 4020 really is a brick wall. 

As your health and care partner, Bupa understand that your clients may find the Australian health care system confusing and hard to navigate.  That’s why we have developed the first of many video tutorials that aim to guide and support your customers as we want to help them understand the health care system in Australia in an easy way.

The videos cover a range of topics in multiple languages which share real customer experiences providing examples that are easy to relate to.

We’re pleased to share these videos with you and hope that you will be able to send them to newly arrived students and visitors and post them on social media platforms. These videos can be accessed on the Bupa website at bupa.com.au/ovc-video

An upcoming networking session outlining details of a new rail maintenance facility for Dubbo will be a driving force for the city’s various trades people to become involved in the project.

Dubbo-Regional-rail-project.pdf