1815933 (Refugee)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal considered an application for protection visas by a group of applicants from the United Kingdom. The core dispute revolved around whether the applicants met the eligibility criteria for a protection visa, specifically the requirement of being present in Australia.

The primary legal issue before the Tribunal was to determine if the applicants satisfied the criterion stipulated in section 36(2) of the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth), which mandates that an applicant for a protection visa must be a non-citizen in Australia. This determination was crucial as it formed a prerequisite for the grant of such a visa under section 65(1) of the Act.

The Tribunal's reasoning focused on the applicants' physical presence in Australia. Movement records indicated that the applicants had departed Australia in May 2019. The Tribunal notified the applicants of this information and invited them to provide comments by a specified date, but no response was received. Consequently, the Tribunal was satisfied that the applicants were not in Australia, thereby failing to meet the essential criterion under section 36(2). As this fundamental requirement was not met, the Tribunal concluded that it was unnecessary to consider the substantive grounds of their protection claims.

The Tribunal affirmed the decision not to grant the applicants protection visas.