But the withdrawal was only the last act of a long history of emotional and physical abuse.

As is often the way in these matters the visa holder – a stranger in a strange land – has limited or no support. They are often isolated by their abusers and have no way to protect themselves or get help.

This client came to AR LAW Services while at a women’s shelter. (She was lucky to have a friend who knew of our work)

Given she had never gone to the police nor any hospital she had very little evidence.

Hence it was a long and difficult case, even-though it was clearly a meritorious case.

Following the many legal and other reports and submission we got our day in court and based upon AR LAW Services legal advocacy the client won her appeal, and therefore her right to stay.

So if you or anyone you know is in a failing or failed relationship and currently has applied for a partner visa talk to us

Book a Consultation

Call 03 9614 0218 or email info@arlaw.com.au to make an initial 30 Minute consultation at our Melbourne office. (conditions apply)

For more go to www.arlaw.com.au

Note: this update, or any previous updates on this page, do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Please call our office to seek professional advice before acting or relying on any of the content on this page

The post Domestic/family Abuse: wife finds happiness in Australia after AR LAW Services wins her appeal appeared first on Australian Immigration Lawyers Migration Agents in Melbourne.

If you are a person holding an Australian visa you now will automatically fails the ‘character test’ if you have been sentenced to 12 months in prison for one or more offences. Conviction for the commission of a single, but more severe, criminal offence alone may be sufficient grounds for the Australian government to cancel your visa, or repeated convictions for less sever criminal offences can also lead to the cancellation of your visa. There are also various other considerations which the DIBP will look at to determine if it considers you to be of bad character and therefore, move to cancel your visa.

Consequently what maybe considered a “good deal’  for an Australian Citizen when negotiating a criminal “plea bargain” maybe a very bad deal for a visa holding foreign national.

That is where AR LAW Services may help, given we not only deal with migration and visa law but also we have almost 20 years experience in assisting people in police and criminal defense law.

So if you or someone you know is facing criminal or police matters or has had a visa refused or cancelled by s501  talk to us.

Call 03 9614 0218 or email info@arlaw.com.au to make an initial 30 Minute consultation at our Melbourne office. (conditions apply)

For more go to www.arlaw.com.au

Note: this update, or any previous updates on this page, do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Please call our office to seek professional advice before acting or relying on any of the content on this page

The post Trouble with the Law? Why foreign nationals need special help when it comes to police matters appeared first on Australian Immigration Lawyers Migration Agents in Melbourne.

Recently I was approached to handle an Administrative Appeals case – it was an health case – a parent visa application.

The visa applicant was 87 and of very poor health and had failed the MOC health assessment and was thereby refused.

The migration agent who had managed the visa application and lodge the AAT appeal prior to AR LAW Services taking over, was hopelessly out of her depth and the file was not fit to argue.

Consequently AR LAW Services redrafted the submissions and took over the matter as if nothing had been done to that date.

But time was running against us because the migration agent appears to have frozen in panic and failed to manage the appeal – basically she just buried her head in the sand and hoped it would all go away.

(At this point I would suggest go to a lawyer not a migration agent – obviously I think you should come to AR LAW Services but go to a lawyer at least)

Back to the story at hand….

It is hard to contemplate the mind of the case officer who thought it was a good idea to “deport” a very old grandmother who suffered dementia and whose entire family and support network is here in Australia, but that is exactly the case at hand.

Given the migration agent had done nothing for the AAT appeal except seek an adjournment by the time AR LAW Services was retained the AAT was set to hand down their decision and where reluctant to grant any more time.

So now faced with departing Australia to die is a foreign country or appealing to the Federal Court with all its attending great costs and continued uncertainty.

It was in this great storm and the tension of a family being ripped apart that I decided to use the MOC (the government chief medical officer) own report – the report that lead to my client refusal against DIBP and for my clients advantage.

I was able to basically put to the department that “you believe my client is so sick, well I say she is too sick to travel”.

(I also put the secondary arguments about family etc.)

And with that, she was able to stay in Australia.

My client was 87 at the time – during the AAT appeal my own mother die, she too was 87.

So if you or someone you know has had a visa cancelled or refused for health or character grounds (s116 or 501) either by the department or the AAT or Federal Circuit Court  talk to us.

Call 03 9614 0218 or email info@arlaw.com.au to make an initial 30 Minute consultation at our Melbourne office. (conditions apply)

For more go to www.arlaw.com.au

Note: this update, or any previous updates on this page, do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Please call our office to seek professional advice before acting or relying on any of the content on this page

The post Mum can stay! Good news for the 87 year old DIBP was set to “deport” appeared first on Australian Immigration Lawyers Migration Agents in Melbourne.

The case was about a review of an application for a student visa. As noted by MikeArch the application was refused for adequacy of funds to meet living and tuition costs.

What happened in this case was that there was an exchange during the hearing between the applicant and the Tribunal member concerning the bank statements that the applicant sought to rely upon to demonstrate to the member that he did in fact satisfy requirements concerning the adequacy of funds. After the hearing, the applicant sent a copy of a further bank statement to the Tribunal.  On receiving this second bank statement, the Tribunal member issued a decision in which he stated that:

“The applicant’s response (concerning whether he satisfied financial capacity requirements) has been to submit a bank statement without comment. There is no apparent evidence from that statement or any other source that the Applicant had access to those funds or that he now has access to funds for the purposes of undertaking further study. The Tribunal has formed the view that the Applicant has had sufficient time and opportunity to provide the evidence required from him regarding his ability to satisfy the financial requirements and it finds that he has not provided sufficient evidence to indicate that he does satisfy those requirements.”

What happened:

The first indication, as reflected in Justice Neville’s judgment, was that the Tribunal’s decision was “very short”.  Justice Neville observed that the Tribunal’s decision ran to only 18 paragraphs.  His Honour stated that:

“In such short compass, it is difficult to see how the Tribunal carried out its statutory function to weigh evidence and give due consideration to it against the claims made by the Applicant”.

Here,  His Honor concluded that the Tribunal did not “weigh” the evidence that the applicant had given at the hearing concerning his bank statement, or the evidence of the second bank statement that was provided following the hearing. It was Justice Neville’s finding that what the Tribunal had done was to simply reject the second bank statement that was provided after the hearing as a “document provided without comment” and that it then declared that the applicant had had a sufficient opportunity to submit the financial information.  Justice Neville described the Tribunal’s assessment as being merely a “blanket dismissal” of the financial information that the applicant had sought to provide, and that there had been no “weighing” process at all by the Tribunal.

So if the Tribunal gives a very short determination, and doesn’t seem to show that it has gone through a process of carefully “weighing” or evaluating the applicant’s claims, then that may be at least a starting point for considering that the Tribunal has not carried out a proper review, and that maybe grounds to consider taking the case to the Federal Circuit Court.

If you or anyone you know has had a visa refused or an AAT Appeal rejected particularly a student visa matter please speak to one of the lawyers at our office for thorough advice on your options.

Call   03 9614 0218 or email         info@arlaw.com.au

to arrange a free initial 30 Minute consultation for general advice at our Melbourne office.

For more go to www.arlaw.com.au
Note: this update, or any previous updates on this page, do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Please call our office to seek professional advice before acting or relying on any of the content on this page

The post Appeal Failed? Read this: Fed Court decision; Short not so sweet! appeared first on Australian Immigration Lawyers Migration Agents in Melbourne.

Clause 485.233 imposes the following criterion:

“When the application was made, it was accompanied by evidence that the applicant had applied for an assessment of the applicant’s skills for the nominated skilled occupation by a relevant assessing authority”.

The issue in the case was:  What does the phrase “accompanied by” actually mean?

Exactly when does “evidence” that the applicant has applied for a skills assessment need to be provided?

On 8 April 2013, the applicant posted an application for a skills assessment to the relevant skills assessment authority for her nominated occupation (accountant) to “Certified Practising Accountants of Australia” (“CPA”).

Then, on 10 April 2013, she lodged an application for a 485 visa under the Graduate Work Stream.

In her application, she truthfully answered the question: “Have you applied to a relevant assessing authority for an assessment of your skills for your nominated skilled occupation” by answering “Yes” (as again, she had posted the application a few days earlier).

In the event, the applicant did not get a receipt from CPA until 18 April 2013.

She then submitted the receipt to the Department on 9 May 2013.

Then, on 23 May 2013, CPA sent her a skills assessment letter advising her that her skills had been assessed as being at the appropriate level for her application.

On 23 August 2013, the Department refused her application!

The reason: the Departmental officer was not satisfied that when the 485 visa application was submitted, that it was “accompanied by” evidence that the applicant had applied for a skills assessment.

In a decision that was referred to in Justice Burchardt’s judgment, Anand v Minister for Immigration & Citizenship (2013) 215 FCR 562,  where Justice Katzmann concluded that “I am prepared to accept that evidence accompanying an application could be supplied after the application is lodged”.   Justice Katzmann observed that it was doubtful that if accompanying evidence is uploaded a day or so after an application that “anyone would argue that the evidence did not accompany the application”.  And her Honour went so far as to say that if an applicant indicated that evidence would be provided within a week and followed through and actually did provide the evidence within that time, then in that circumstance it might also be said that the evidence had accompanied the application.

Where Justice Katzmann drew the line in Anand  was to say that the term “accompanied by” is not so “elastic” to allow material to be provide five months after an application was lodged and a decision had been made on the application.

However, in Nguyen, Justice Burchardt took a “narrower” view concerning the interpretation of the phrase “accompanied by”.  It was Justice Burchardt’s observation that the wording of clause 485.223 is expressed in “imperative terms”, suggesting that there must be some very close temporal connection between the lodgment of the application and the submission of evidence in order for it to be found that the evidence has “accompanied” the application.

Accordingly, Justice Burchardt accepted the interpretation of the phrase “accompanied by” that had previously been adopted by the Tribunal:  namely, that the evidence must be submitted “shortly after” the application (at least in circumstances where the application is submitted “on-line” and it is therefore not physically possible to upload documents at the exact time as the application through ImmiAccount.

In the Nguyen case, there had been a delay of 29 days between the time of the submission of the application and the submission of the evidence that a skills assessment had been applied for, and that delay was considered to be “too much of a delay”.

If you or anyone you know is about to lodge a 485 SKILLED VISA or sub class 189 or 190  or has had a  visa refused or cancelled please speak to one of the lawyers at our office for thorough advice on your options.

Call   03 9614 0218 or email         info@arlaw.com.au

to arrange a free initial 30 Minute consultation at our Melbourne office.

For more go to www.arlaw.com.au
Note: this update, or any previous updates on this page, do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Please call our office to seek professional advice before acting or relying on any of the content on this page

The post 485 visa applications – What does it mean to be “accompanied by” ? Be careful! appeared first on Australian Immigration Lawyers Migration Agents in Melbourne.

According to a report in the Brisbane Times the DIBP case officer’s letter informing Mr Bolvaran of the decision read, “You were invited to ask for revocation of the original decision and you made representations to the decision-maker about why the original decision should be revoked,”

“After consideration of your response, the decision-maker has decided to revoke the original decision to cancel your visa.

“S501CA(5) of the Migration Act provides that if the decision to cancel your visa is revoked the original decision is taken not to have been made.”

A person can seek revocation of the cancellation decision within strict timeframes, but needs to provide sufficient reasons as to why their visa should be reinstated. This is generally done by addressing Ministerial Direction 65

Mr Bolvaran who is now trying to arrange a new resident return visa from the Australian Embassy in Santiago told the newspaper that he could not believe the outcome.

“Until I’m there and past Immigration, Customs and Border Security, I won’t believe it” said Mr Bolvaran who lived for 41 years in Australia as a permanent resident thinking it was the same as having citizenship.

DIBP has cancelled over 1000 visas in the last year on character grounds pursuant to section 501, regardless of length of residence in Australia and level of absorption into the Australian community.

Bolvaran’s case has troubled the president of the Queensland Council of Civil Liberties, Julie Jansen who last month pointed out Bolvaran was “essentially Australian” and a product of Australian society. Ms Jansen said the case raised wider questions about the deportation of Australian-bred criminals.

If you or anyone you know has had a visa cancelled for bad character under s501 or if you are before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) please speak to one of the lawyers at our office for thorough advice on your options.

Call 03 9614 0218 or email info@arlaw.com.au to see if you qualify for a free initial 30 Minute general information consultation at our Melbourne office.
For more go to www.arlaw.com.au

For more go to www.arlaw.com.au
Note: this update, or any previous updates on this page, do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Please call our office to seek professional advice before acting or relying on any of the content on this page

The post Revocation: A Ray of hope for the “sinners” with bad character – 501 visa cancellation. appeared first on Australian Immigration Lawyers Migration Agents in Melbourne.

In the seven months to March of this year, some 9000 student visas have been cancelled by the DIBP, according to a recent report in The Australian.  Compared to two years ago where the figures stood at between 8000 to 9000 cancellations, it is looking like student visa cancellations could hit 15,000 this year.

Student visas may be cancelled on various grounds, including plagiarism. The Australian’s report highlighted the case of Shaheryar Khan, who had his visa cancelled because he was reported to have copied a number of his assessments directly from internet sources without attribution.

If you or anyone you know has had a student visa cancelled please speak to one of the lawyers at our office for thorough advice on your options.

Call   03 9614 0218 or email         info@arlaw.com.au

to arrange a free initial 30 Minute consultation at our Melbourne office.

For more go to www.arlaw.com.au
Note: this update, or any previous updates on this page, do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Please call our office to seek professional advice before acting or relying on any of the content on this page

The post Student Visa cancellation – likely to double this year appeared first on Australian Immigration Lawyers Migration Agents in Melbourne.