SZFXJ v Minister for Immigration

FEDERAL MAGISTRATES COURT OF AUSTRALIA

SZFXJ v MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & ANOR [2006] FMCA 1317

MIGRATION – Where Tribunal may have made a jurisdictional error but there are independent grounds for concluding that the applicant is not entitled to a visa.

Migration Act 1958, s.424A

SZEEU v Minister for Immigration [2006] 150 FCR 214
VBAP v Minister for Immigration [2005] FCA 965
SZEVE v Minister for Immigration [2006] FCA 390
NBAN v Minister for Immigration [2006] FCA 57

Applicant: SZFXJ

First Respondent: MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS

Second Respondent: REFUGEE REVIEW TRIBUNAL

File Number: SYG665 of 2005

Judgment of: Raphael FM

Hearing date: 28 August 2006

Date of Last Submission: 28 August 2006

Delivered at: Sydney

Delivered on: 28 August 2006

REPRESENTATION

For the Applicant: In Person

Counsel for the Respondent: Ms R Henderson

Solicitors for the Respondent: Blake Dawson Waldron

ORDERS

1. Application dismissed.

2. Applicant to pay the respondent’s costs assessed in the sum of $5,000.00.

FEDERAL MAGISTRATES
COURT OF AUSTRALIA AT
SYDNEY

SYG665 of 2005

SZFXJ

Applicant

And

MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION & MULTICULTURAL AFFAIRS

First Respondent

REFUGEE REVIEW TRIBUNAL

Second Respondent

REASONS FOR JUDGMENT

1. The applicant is a citizen of India.  He arrived in Australia on 24 February 2004.   On 7 April 2004 he lodged an application for a protection (Class XA) visa with the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs.  On 14 September 2004 a delegate of the Minister refused to grant a protection visa and on 8 October 2004 the applicant applied for review of that decision.

2. The applicant attended a hearing with the Tribunal and on 4 February 2005 the Tribunal determined to affirm the decision not to grant a protection visa.  It handed that decision down on 25 February 2005.

3. The basis for the applicant’s claim to have a well-founded fear of persecution for the Convention reason of imputed political opinion arises out of his association with his father, a teacher in their local village.  The father had taken into his home from time to time students to whom he gave private tuition.  One of those students was a Mr SS.  The applicant said that his father commenced tutoring SS in 1991.  The applicant claimed that it later became known that SS was involved with a Sikh terrorist movement.  The applicant’s father stopped tutoring SS in either 1991 or 1992 and last saw SS in 1992.

4. Notwithstanding this, the applicant claimed that his father had been taken by the police on a number of occasions between 1992 and 1996 and on one occasion the applicant was also taken by the police although at the time he was only a youth of approximately 16 years of age.

5. The applicant then told of how his father had escaped from police custody and vanished.  He had been told that no one knew of his father’s whereabouts, but it appears that sometime prior to the Tribunal hearing, his father’s whereabouts in the United States of America were revealed to him and that his father won…