Australian Visa Refusal – Apply for Review

It is indeed disheartening to receive a visa refusal or visa cancellation in either case of study or migration to Australia.

If you have also received a Notice from Department of Home Affairs of consideration to cancel your visa application, You need not panic! There can be a solution in most of the cases.

While following may not be the exhaustive list for Visa Refusal, here are some of them depending on your case:

Application for a wrong type of visa

Failure in proving the financial capacity

Submission of incomplete or false information

Sponsor of the applicant failed to meet the requirements

Unawareness of the course applied for

No relevancy of the applied course with the current qualifications or experience.

Failure in providing concrete future plans

Miscalculation in Points

Bogus Documents

In majority cases, you may be eligible to approach AAT for review of your application.

From 1st of July 2015, the working of Migration Review Tribunal (MRT) and Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) were incorporated into Migration Division of AAT that reviews the decisions made by the Federal Government.

Administrative Appeal Tribunal is the only body that has authority to review the merits of a visa application.

The AAT reconsiders your case file entirely reviewing the facts provided, laws relating to the decision and arrive at a new decision. AAT examines your application afresh reviewing the documents, evidences, forms and all the information you have provided to the department.

There is a TIME LIMIT!

When you are applying for an appeal, you must lodge the application for review within the timeframe specified in the notification letter of decision. There may also be an additional application fees for the appeal application.

The processing time may again vary depending upon the case category. However, generally the durations are long ranging anywhere around 12 to 18 months.

It is only in special cases where you may request for an assessment on priority basis.

If the outcome of AAT review is ‘Affirm’, then you have 2 options further:

Application to Federal Court: This can be done in strictly limited cases where there is some Legal Error in the decision by AAT.

Application for Ministerial intervention: You can write a request to the minister for his personal discretion to grant you visa by providing some potent reasons. The number of requests that are successful is less. But, in general if the Minister intervenes then the decision is positive.