Zahoor (Migration)

[2022] AATA 2213

Zahoor (Migration) [2022] AATA 2213 (27 May 2022)

DECISION RECORD

DIVISION:  Migration & Refugee Division

APPLICANT:  Mr Zohaib Zahoor

CASE NUMBER:  2015725

HOME AFFAIRS REFERENCE(S):           BCC2019/3262717

MEMBER:  Michael Bradford

DATE AND TIME OF

ORAL DECISION AND REASONS:          27 May 2022 at 10:05 am (NSW time)

DATE OF WRITTEN RECORD:                1 July 2022

PLACE OF DECISION:  Sydney

DECISION:  The Tribunal affirms the decision under review.

Statement made on 01 July 2022 at 8:52am

CATCHWORDS

MIGRATION – cancellation – Student (Temporary) (Class TU) visa – Subclass 500 (Student) – incorrect information in the visa application – enrolment in a registered course – lengthy gap in studies – marriage and family details – application lodged by an agent – medical issues – limited academic progress – return to home country – decision under review affirmed           

LEGISLATION

Migration Act 1958, ss 101, 107, 109
Migration Regulations 1994, r 2.41

APPLICATION FOR REVIEW

Introduction

1. This is an application to review a decision made by a delegate of the Minister for Home Affairs who, on 16 October 2020, cancelled the applicant’s Subclass 500 Student (Temporary) (Class TU) visa under Sec 109 of the Migration Act 1958 (the Act).

1. At the hearing on 27 May 2022 the Tribunal made an oral decision and gave oral reasons for the decision.

1. More recently the Department of Home Affairs has requested the Tribunal to provide a written record of those reasons.

1. What follows is the written record.

Background, some procedural and documentary aspects

1. The Review Application (RA) was filed on 23 October 2020 and is within time.

1. At the time the RA was filed the applicant provided to the Tribunal a statement headed “To Whom it May Concern” in which he recites much of his personal history including his medical issues. There is also in evidence a bundle of independent medical records, the effect of which will be outlined later in these reasons, which do corroborate to some limited extent his evidence regarding these issues and their ongoing effects, matters which he puts forward to explain a long gap in his studies in Australia.

1. The applicant accepted the Tribunal’s invitation to participate in a telephone hearing today, 27 May 2022. He has given oral evidence through an interpreter over a period of about an hour. Although he had indicated in his hearing Acceptance Form that he proposed to call his father to give oral evidence it became apparent in the early stages of the hearing that his father was not answering the call which the Tribunal had put through to him and no application was made subsequently for an adjournment to accommodate evidence from his father. In these circumstances, the Tribunal proceeded to hear oral evidence from the applicant alone.

1. In addition to the applicant’s documentary case and his oral evidence, the effect of which I will come back to later in these reasons, the Tribunal has seen a file from the Department which contains various documents including a letter to the Department dated 26 May 2019, a copy of the NOICC dated 3 August 2020 (the Sec 107 Notice), and some medical records relating to treatment provided to the applicant in September 2018. In addition there is a copy of the applicant’s response to the Sec 107 Notice and a copy of the Notice of Cancellation (NOC) dated 16 October 2020.

1. The Tribunal has also had access to a PRISMS record relating to the applicant’s studies in Australia together with his Movement’s Details. Having discussed some of the information in these records with the applicant today there does not appear to be anything controversial in them.

1. For the following reasons the Tribunal has concluded that the decision to cancel the applicant’s visa should be affirmed.

Has there been relevant non-compliance as stated in the Sec 107 Notice?

1. Although the Tribunal has not seen a copy of the Visa Application (VA) which led to the grant of the subject TU 500 visa it appears that the applicant had sought the visa for the purposes of engaging in studies in a Business course and two courses in Leadership and Management at an education provider situated on the Gold Coast. PRISMS appears to confirm this.

1. The VA was filed on 11 June 2018 and the visa was granted to the applicant on 13 July of that year. He arrived in Australia on 31 July 2018.

1. In the Sec 107 Notice the Department referred to the fact that in the VA the applicant had stated that he had never been married and that in another document which he lodged in support of the VA, namely a Statement of Purpose (the 2018 SOP), he stated that his family consisted of eight members including himself, his parents, and five siblings. The Department noted in the Sec 107 Notice that no details of any other family members had been given in the 2018 SOP.

1. Although the Tribunal has not seen a copy of the 2018 SOP the applicant has led no evidence on the review to suggest that the delegate’s recital of the extent of the information in the 2018 SOP was in any way inaccurate or incomplete.

1. In his response to the Sec 107 Notice the applicant did not dispute that at the time the VA was filed he was in fact married to a Raheela Shoukat. Their marriage apparently took place in Pakistan prior to the birth of their first child, Zehak Zohaib, in 2013.The actual date of the marriage is unclear on the evidence led but nothing appears to turn on this.

1. Reference is made in the Sec 107 Notice to the letter mentioned earlier which the applicant is alleged to have written on 26 May 2019 in support of an application for a visa to enable his wife and daughter to come to Australia for a visit. In this letter the applicant referred to them in terms which suggested to the delegate that he was attempting to mislead the Department by suggesting that he was not in fact related to them.

1. In the Sec 107 Notice the Department relied on a non-compliance with Sec 101(b) of the Act given the misstatements concerning his marriage status in the VA, in the 2018 SOP and in the 26 May 2019 letter.

1. The applicant’s response is contained in a letter dated 14 August 2020 in which the applicant informed the delegate that the VA had been prepared by his agent in Pakistan; that the applicant had provided him with his marriage certificate and the birth certificate for his daughter; that the agent proceeded to prepare the application, filled out the forms, drafted the 2018 SOP and provided these documents to the Department to procure the grant of the Student visa.

1. The applicant said in his response letter that he simply left it to his agent to provide the correct information. He goes on to recite some history since he arrived here. He refers to the fact that he had some medical issues and in support of that proposition he provided to the delegate some medical reports which confirm that he underwent surgery at Blacktown Hospital in September 2018 for the removal of his appendix. He said that after that the surgery he was upset so he went back to see his family towards the end of that year. He stayed there for about 3 months, apparently. The Tribunal notes that the Movements Details record confirms as much in that there is a departure on 10 December 2018 and an arrival on 20 March 2019.

1. He goes on to say in his response that after he returned to Australia he was feeling lonely so he decided to apply for a visitor’s visa for his wife and his daughter. He said he was quite

unaware at this stage that his agent had provided incorrect information to the Department concerning his marital status.

1. Looking at the letter of 26 May 2019 it does appear to the Tribunal to have been written by the applicant’s brother, Sohaib Zahoor. It is his name which appears at the foot of the letter, not the applicant’s, although their given names are obviously very similar. The applicant has said, and the Tribunal accepts, that when he initially came out here in July 2018 he commenced living with Sohaib and his family in Quakers Hill, a suburb of Sydney, and that he was living with them in May 2019.

1. His brother has a young son named Shahir Zohaib, apparently. This is confirmed by a record which the applicant provided to the Tribunal, if not to the Department, in the form of a Family Registration Certificate issued on 28 January 2019. This Certificate also confirms that Sohaib is the applicant’s brother, or one of them.

1. Read in the light of that information the terminology adopted by Sohaib in his letter when he described the applicant, his wife and their daughter is appropriate and correct and, more particularly, the reference in the letter to the applicant’s wife and daughter in the third person is appropriate and understandable. The paragraph which commences “In our last visit to Pakistan..” is consistent with this because Sohaib was simply informing the Department that when he and his family, together with the applicant, had gone back to Pakistan in December 2018 for a family visit there was some bonding between the applicant’s daughter and Sohaib’s son.

1. Read in this context the reference in the letter to “my four-bedroom house” is plainly a reference to Sohaib’s residence in Quakers Hill and is thus also consistent with the letter having been written by him.

1. Consequently, insofar as the delegate relied in the Sec 107 Notice on miss-information in the 26 May 2019 letter it is, in the Tribunal’s view, misconceived. The Tribunal is satisfied that the letter was in fact written by the applicant’s brother and was not itself misleading. But this of course does not mean that the delegate was not entitled to issue the Sec 107 Notice and to cancel the visa given the other misstatements which the applicant accepts his agent made in the other documents.

1. The response goes on to refer to some other matters. The applicant states that he had not realised what the agent had said in the VA concerning his marital status until he got the Sec 107 Notice in early August 2020. He refers to COVID, mentions that he was struggling with it and says that his studies had been affected by it. Whatever significance these matters may have at the discretionary level they can have no bearing on the issue of whether the delegate was entitled to find relevant non-compliance with Sec 101(b) of the Act.

1. As noted earlier, the NOC was issued under Sec 109 of the Act. In that Notice the misstatements concerning the applicant’s marital status are relied on for the purposes of establishing a breach of Sec 101(b) of the Act. On any view, which the applicant does not dispute, the VA and 2018 SOP do contain material misstatements (express in the case of the VA, implied in the case of the 2018 SOP) concerning the applicant’s marital status which do give rise to a breach of Sec 101(b).

1. The delegate has obviously decided to cancel the applicant’s visa on that ground. He noted in the NOC that the applicant had agreed in his response that there had been non- compliance but had attempted to avoid responsibility for it by saying that he got an agent to prepare the documents and was quite unaware of what he (the agent) had done.

1. There is nothing in the applicant’s review case to the effect that the delegate was not entitled to proceed to cancel his visa on that basis. The applicant must be and is responsible for the conduct of his agent in connection with the preparation and lodgement of the VA and 2018 SOP. The Act contains various provisions which makes this crystal clear.

1. Nor does it matter whether the incorrect information was provided deliberately or inadvertently. It is not easy for the Tribunal to understand why the agent would deliberately misstate the applicant’s marital status in the VA as ordinarily disclosure of the fact that he was married to a person who was not accompanying him to Australia would be a matter favourable to him given the nature of his VA. But, in any event, it is unnecessary for the Tribunal to speculate about this. The simple and incontrovertible fact is that in this case the applicant was married at the time, the VA stated he had never been married and the 2018 SOP contained information which was consistent with, or at least not inconsistent with, the relevant misstatement in the VA.

1. For those reasons the Tribunal finds that, quite apart from the 26 May 2019 letter, there was a non-compliance with Sec 101(b) as described in the Sec 107 Notice and that, consequently, there are grounds for cancellation of the applicant’s TU-500 visa.

Should the visa be cancelled?

1. Given there has been non-compliance in two of the ways described in the NOC it is necessary for the Tribunal to consider whether the visa should be cancelled under Sec 109(1) of the Act.

1. Although cancellation in this context is ultimately a discretionary matter for the Tribunal in exercising the power under Sec 109(1) the Tribunal must consider the matters referred to in Sec 109(1)(b) and (c), namely the applicant’s response to the Sec 107 Notice and the circumstances listed in regulation 2.41 (insofar as they are relevant) together with any other circumstances which come into play at the discretionary stage.

1. In addition, the Tribunal may have regard to government policy as set out in the Department’s Procedural Advice Manual (PAM3) under the heading “General Visa Cancellation Powers”. This refers to matters such as the consequences of cancelling the visa, international obligations and so on.

1. Turning firstly to the delegate’s decision it was plainly open to him to find, as he did in the NOC, that the decision to grant the visa in the first place was at least partly based on the incorrect answer in the VA regarding his marital status and the misleading information in the 2018 SOP regarding the extent of his family.

1. The delegate went on in the NOC to examine other circumstances. Reliance was placed on the fact that there may have been noncompliance with condition 8202, which according to the Movements Details record attached to the applicant’s TU 500 visa. Reference was also made to the fact that he had not been enrolled, or enrolled at all relevant times, in a course which was at least equivalent to the AQF level for which the visa had been granted. Again, for reasons which I will come to shortly, the applicant did not dispute these findings in the review.

1. After considering those and other factors the delegate was satisfied that the grounds for cancelling the visa outweighed the reasons for not cancelling it. Accordingly, the applicant’s visa was cancelled.

1. Having heard the applicant give oral evidence today, the Tribunal is satisfied that he has, for the most part, done his best to provide information which he believes to be true. To this

extent he can be regarded as a credible witness. But the facts are, for the most part, relatively straight-forward and uncontroversial. The problem in this case is that much of the objective history, particularly that which relates to his personal circumstances since he arrived in Australia in July 2018, does nothing to assist him and, indeed, for reasons I will come to in a moment, the history can be seen to involve unsatisfactory conduct on his part even after allowances are made for his ongoing medical issues.

1. As I said, he has been in Australia since July 2018. On his own account he has not completed any of the vocational courses he has been enrolled in and indeed, on his own account, he has only been engaged in studies in one or two of them for a very short period, something in the order of a few months.

1. His review case does require proper consideration of the reasons he has given for this rather appalling academic record. As I said, the fact that he has not been able to make any progress in his studies here is not disputed. His case is that his Student visa should not have been cancelled because he was suffering from medical issues which have prevented him from engaging in productive studies and that, consequently, he deserves a second chance.

1. In the “To Whom It May Concern” statement he reiterates what he said to the Department in his response to the NOICC, namely that his agent was responsible for the misstatement concerning his marital status in the VA. He also says, and the Tribunal accepts, that the agent prepared the 2018 SOP which, as I have indicated, also contained misleading information regarding the extent of his family.

1. In this statement the applicant refers to his marriage and, more particularly, to his wife’s Passport issued on 18 August 2015 which, he says, discloses that he is married to her. The Passport itself, a copy of which is in evidence, plainly confirms as much. The applicant asserts in the statement that because her Passport was issued well prior to the date on which the VA was filed there could be no intention on his part to mislead the Department regarding his marital status. Implicit in this assertion of course is the contention that his wife’s Passport was given to the Department in connection with the VA but the problem with it is that there is no evidence to establish that it was. Not only is there no evidence to the effect that her Passport was in fact provided to the Department at the time the VA was filed there is no explanation offered as to why it would have been provided to support that application. All he says in the statement is that he gave his marriage certificate to the agent but there is no evidence from him or his agent to suggest that it was provided to the Department at that time. The fact, if it be a fact, that he gave it to the agent falls well short of establishing that he provided it to the Department.

1. In any event, it is reasonably clear to the Tribunal that the applicant did not provide to the Department a copy of his wife’s Passport until in or about May 2019 when he applied for the grant of a visitor’s visa to enable her and their daughter to come out to Australia. There is a document in the Department’s file headed “Priority Caseload Assessment” which confirms that his wife’s Passport was provided to the Department at that time, something which appears to have triggered the internal investigation and, ultimately, the issue of the Sec 107 Notice. The fact that his brother’s 26 May 2019 letter specifically refers to his wife’s Passport also suggests that it was provided in connection with that application.

1. In the statement he explains the circumstances of his application for the visitor’s visa in May 2019, refers to his domestic circumstances at the time, reiterates that he was unaware of what his agent had stated in the VA and recites some of the history after he arrived in Australia.

1. He also refers to the fact that he had undergone surgery at Blacktown Hospital to remove his appendix in September 2018. He says that after the surgery he was feeling down so he went

back to Pakistan in December of that year. He had not been studying at all prior to this time. He was obviously enrolled in courses of study to have been granted the TU-500 visa, a fact which the PRISMS record confirms, but he accepted in his oral evidence that these were to have been undertaken on the Gold Coast and that he in fact never went up there.

Apparently, he has always lived with his brother in Sydney.

1. The Tribunal is satisfied on the evidence led that he had a medical condition not long after he arrived here which would have been causing him some discomfort and that this would explain why he did not study during the second half of 2018. The fact that he returned to Pakistan to see his wife and daughter towards the end of that year is perhaps understandable in these circumstances.

1. He returned to Australia in March 2019 and, in May of that year, applied for the FA-600 visa but without success, apparently. Once that happened, things seemed to go down-hill. He elected not to study and ultimately went back to Pakistan for the birth of his second child, departing Australia for that purpose on 27 November 2019.

1. He returned to Australia again on 23 February 2020. It would appear, and it is apparent on the face of his statement, that he was studying for a Diploma of Marketing and Communications at AITE at the time his statement was prepared in October 2020. He said in the statement that he would be finishing this course in July 2021.This evidence is also correct and is confirmed by the PRISMS record which reveals that the course began in July 2020.

1. When giving oral evidence today he was asked some questions about that history. He said that he studied for the Diploma for one semester, about a few months, and that when he attended hospital in September 2020 he was, in fact, still studying in that course. This too may well be correct, there is certainly no objective documentary information to suggest otherwise. The Tribunal is prepared to accept that he did to that extent make some attempt to study this course.

1. His review case is that he had a recurring problem with urination as from about July 2020 and that he attended the Emergency Department of Blacktown Hospital on 8 September 2020 to seek treatment for it. He was diagnosed with dysuria, a condition which on the evidence led involves discomfort and pain when urinating, apparently. There is a Discharge Summary from the Hospital to this effect. It records that he had been having a problem with urinating for “more than a month”.

1. The applicant has given evidence that he informed AITE of these things in about September 2020 and the Tribunal is prepared to accept that he did. He also said that he did not attend any classes or otherwise engage in any studies subsequently. He went on to say that he had arranged on the telephone to defer his studies in the Diploma but, according to the PRISMS record, no formal application to this effect was made to AITE or, if it was, it was unsuccessful. Consequently, his enrolment in this course was also cancelled, a fact which the applicant does not dispute.

1. The Tribunal accepts that he contacted AITE but does not accept that he was told by them that he would not need to apply for a deferment of his studies in this course. To the extent that his evidence suggests otherwise the Tribunal does not accept it.

1. On his discharge from Blacktown Hospital on 9 September 2020 he was referred to two urological specialists, Dr Max Dias and Dr Vincent Tse, and was eventually diagnosed as having a recurrent urethral stricture in early November 2020. There is a medical report from Dr Tse to this effect. There is some evidence in this report to the effect that the applicant had a history of urethral problems before he came out here.

1. The applicant was ultimately admitted to Macquarie Hospital for surgery on 10 February 2021 and was discharged, apparently, on 12 February of that year. Again, there is a medical record to this effect.

1. The Tribunal thus has no difficulty accepting the applicant’s evidence that he was in considerable discomfort particularly when urinating during the period from September 2020 to in or about February 2021, a period of about 6 months.

1. He goes on to say in the statement that he would suffer hardship if his visa was cancelled because in that event he would have to go back to Pakistan and would not be able to obtain medical treatment there because there was no health insurance and he would not be able to afford it.

1. Of course, that statement must now be read in the context of more recent events, among other things. He gave evidence today that he returned to Pakistan in July 2021 and has remained there since. This is confirmed by the Movement’s Details record. He said he wanted to go back to his home country and be reunited with his wife and daughters. This seems plausible enough.

1. He also gave oral evidence that he was not working in Australia at the time he left because of his health issues. He accepted that he had not been receiving any medical treatment in Pakistan since he returned but also said that he continues to have urination problems and was not presently working in Pakistan because of these issues.

1. In his email to the Tribunal of 15 April 2022 he said that after his initial medical issues in 2018 he returned to Pakistan because he felt frustrated and wanted to see his family. When he got back here there was, according to this letter, a long gap in his studies because of COVID, that he was now facing the same medical issues and that he had contacted his doctor because he needed a “check-up”.

1. This being so, the hardship he refers to in the statement has been alleviated to some extent in that a decision has already been made to return to Pakistan, and that is what he has in fact done.

1. There is no medical evidence to corroborate the applicant in relation to his assertions regarding his current medical issues, whatever they consist of, nor is there any satisfactory evidence to establish that his ability to engage in productive study was by reason of those or other issues compromised during the period from March 2019 to in or about July 2020, a period of about 16 months.

1. He also said today that the whole episode had been very stressful for him. This may be so but the fact remains that he has not satisfactorily explained to the Tribunal why it is that he has made no progress at all with his studies since arriving here in July 2018, now almost 4 years ago.

1. The medical evidence led on the review, such as it is, falls well short of establishing that the applicant has been unable to engage in productive studies throughout that period, or even a significant portion of it, because of his medical issues or other distractions, such as the onset of COVID.

1. In this case the Tribunal is well satisfied that it was open to the delegate to find that the applicant had not complied with Sec 101(b) and that he was in breach of condition 8202. There has been no, or no effective, challenge to either of these findings on the review.

1. At the discretionary level the Tribunal must of course have regard to the individual circumstances of the case including the matters raised by the applicant together with the other matters referred to in regulation 2.41, the relevant section of PAM 3 and any other relevant matters.

1. The Tribunal regards the circumstances in which the non-compliance occurred to be somewhat ameliorating. The Tribunal accepts the applicant’s evidence that his agent prepared the relevant documents and that he was quite unaware that there had been misinformation conveyed to the Department concerning his marital status and the extent of his family. But, having said that, the provisions of the Act make it clear that the applicant must bear responsibility for the incorrect information. Moreover, apart from providing the agent with the documents, one of which revealed that he was in fact married, he apparently did nothing to ensure that the information in the VA and 2018 SOP was in fact correct.

1. Insofar as the decision was based on the letter of 26 May 2019 it was, as I have already indicated, misconceived because the applicant did not write the letter. Whilst this too is an alleviating circumstance, in the overall context of this case it cannot be regarded as having any great bearing on the outcome given the applicant’s responsibility for the other misstatements.

1. The other circumstance in the applicant’s favour is the nature of the misstatement, namely incorrect information concerning his marital status. As I have said, it is hard to imagine why the agent would have deliberately misstated this information because the fact that the applicant was married and had a wife and daughter in Pakistan who were not accompanying him to Australia would be close personal ties to his home country. This suggests that it was almost certainly inadvertent, a circumstance which I think must also be considered as favourable to him at the discretionary level.

1. Whilst the Tribunal regards these circumstances to be of some weight in the overall scheme of things the real difficulty which the applicant must confront is the fact that even if allowances are made for them and for his medical issues, the surgery in 2018 to remove his appendix and his ongoing urinary tract issues which ultimately led to the surgery in February 2021, the fact is that he has failed to sufficiently engage with his studies. The Tribunal is by no means satisfied on the evidence led that his medical issues provide an adequate explanation for these long periods of inactivity. I accept that he was feeling homesick in the first half of 2019 and that he wanted his wife and daughter to come out here for a visit and that, when that visa was refused, he would have been troubled by that but he does not appear to have engaged in any studies from the time when he got back to Australia in March 2019 to when he returned to Pakistan toward the end of November 2019, a period of about 8 months.

1. On his return to Australia in February 2020 he did enrol, it seems at some stage during the first half of that year, in the Diploma of Marketing and Communications and he did attempt to study that course but on his own account he only did so for one semester. He had surgery for his dysuria in February 2021 and has not studied since, preferring instead to return to Pakistan in July of that year.

1. There is no convincing evidence, medical or otherwise, to the effect that the applicant was unable to study as from say March 2021. There is certainly no reliable evidence to suggest that the surgery in February of that year was unsuccessful. The applicant’s review case does not support the contention that he was unable to resume his studies at about that time. He simply states in his documents that COVID continued to affect him. This evidence suggests to the Tribunal that he did not engage in studies not because of any ongoing medical issues post-March 2021 but rather because of other personal stressors, including but not limited to COVID.

1. In his email sent to the Tribunal on 15 April 2022 the applicant specifically mentions COVID and asserts that the long gap in his studies was due to COVID. But COVID is not and never has been, of itself, a reason for an international student who is on a TU-500 visa not to study. The applicant has led no medical evidence to establish that his ability to engage in productive study was compromised at any stage because of COVID, or his other medical issues for that matter, and the Tribunal is certainly not satisfied that post-February 2021 the applicant was unable to engage with his studies, particularly at the vocational level, because of them.

1. Most of the tuition in many of these vocational courses would have been conducted online in February 2021 a fact which, if he had any ongoing urination issues, would have assisted him to deal with them.

1. It is apparent from his oral and other evidence that after February 2021 he simply decided it was just too difficult so he went back to Pakistan to be reunited with his family. The Movements Details record confirms that he departed Australia for the last time in July 2021 and other evidence is to the effect that he has remained in Pakistan since.

1. He also gave oral evidence to the effect that he has had ongoing urination issues but accepts that he has not been receiving any medical treatment for them.

1. The decision to return to Pakistan in July 2021 was no doubt made for sound personal reasons but the Tribunal infers from this that he has other priorities. I am by no means convinced that if the cancellation was set aside the applicant would return to Australia and engage in productive studies. He has simply done nothing, or very little, to demonstrate that he would do so.

1. When one looks at the other matters which the applicant has raised in his statement such as the question of hardship, these appear to have been overtaken to some extent by the fact that he has already returned to Pakistan. The Tribunal is prepared to accept that the applicant will suffer some hardship from the cancellation of his visa, and that his parents may be disappointed at the outcome, but little weight can attach to these considerations in circumstances where the applicant has brought much of this on himself.

1. His marriage is apparently strong and he now has a role to play in caring for his two young daughters. Overall, that the applicant will suffer some hardship from the cancellation is not a circumstance which can attract any real weight.

1. There are no other legal consequences which would arise other than the imposition of an exclusion period but these too have limited significance in this case given that he elected to return to Pakistan in July 2021.

1. There are no relevant international obligations to consider and no other relevant matters.

Summary and conclusion

1. Overall, the circumstances in this case indicate to the Tribunal that the decision to cancel the applicant’s TU-500 visa should be affirmed. An applicant who asserts a right to be granted such a visa, or to have such a visa reinstated after it has been cancelled by the Department, must satisfactorily demonstrate a willingness to engage in productive studies for legitimate career related reasons, whether the tuition is provided online or otherwise. They must satisfactorily demonstrate that they have a genuine desire to remain here on a temporary basis for that purpose.

1. The applicant has given no evidence at all on this review regarding his career goals. He has told me that he is not working in Pakistan even though he has not been receiving any medical treatment for what he says are ongoing medical issues. The Tribunal is not prepared to accept his evidence, if in fact he has given any, that these issues have prevented him from studying absent any independent corroborative medical evidence to this effect. I do accept that he may well have recurring urination problems to some extent but, on his own account, these have not been such as to require him to seek any further medical treatment since he underwent the surgery in February 2021.

1. Considering the applicant’s overall circumstances, and after having given due weight to the relevant matters, the Tribunal concludes that his TU-500 visa should be cancelled.

DECISION

1. The Tribunal affirms the decision under review.

Michael Bradford Member