Jang (Migration)

This matter concerned the review of decisions by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) to affirm the refusal of Student (Temporary) (Class TU) visas, subclass 500, to three applicants: a primary applicant, her spouse, and their son. The primary applicant, a 53-year-old Korean citizen, had previously held a Student Guardian visa. The review was initiated after the delegate's decision to refuse the visas.

The central legal issue before the Tribunal was whether the primary applicant met the criterion of being "enrolled in a registered course of study" as required by the *Migration Regulations 1994* (Cth) and the *Migration Act 1958* (Cth). This criterion is a prerequisite for the grant of a student visa, and the Tribunal considered whether the absence of evidence of current enrolment meant that other primary criteria could not be meaningfully assessed.

The Tribunal reasoned that evidence of current enrolment in a registered course of study is fundamental to a student visa application. The primary applicant had not provided a current Confirmation of Enrolment (CoE) or any other evidence demonstrating her ongoing enrolment. While she had provided an unsigned letter of offer for English courses dated January 2021, there was no proof of actual enrolment in that or any other course. The Tribunal noted that even the course she had purportedly applied for in March 2018 should have been completed by the time of the review. Consequently, the Tribunal concluded that the enrolment criterion, as stipulated in clause 500.211 of the Regulations, was not met.

As the primary applicant failed to satisfy the enrolment criterion, the Tribunal determined that the criteria for the grant of a student visa were not met for any of the applicants. Accordingly, the Tribunal affirmed the decisions not to grant the Student (Temporary) (Class TU) visas to all three applicants.