Permanent Resident Visa- Investment Bond withdrawn. Innocents left in Limbo!

Approx October 2007 saw the end of A$100,000 investment bond that was formerly a means to claim 5 bonus points for certain General Skilled Migration applicants. We understand that this problem was brought about as a result of the unauthorised actions of a certain bank official. However, it’s negative impact is being felt by a significant number of completely innocent applicants.

The length of time reaching a resolution is beginning to have a serious effect on some of us. I am sure you would appreciate that when most applicants make an application for settlement in Australia, our lives go into a kind of limbo, where we’re no longer fully pursuing our lives in our home country, but not yet starting our new lives in Australia. We realise that, until we have been granted visa, there are no guarantees of success. Nevertheless, applicants enter the process with a certain degree of legitimate expectation. It is now around 6 months since this issue arose, and the lack of an indication of our future prospects is becoming very alarming for some.

As you would appreciate, few people have a “lazy” $100,000 just lying around, so most of us have taken quite serious measures to raise the funds. Some have remortgaged our homes to release equity, and others have put our homes on the market to do so. These processes involve expense to the people concerned, but these were expenses we were willing to bear to achieve our aim of living in Australia. While we knew such steps were on the understanding that our applications were not guaranteed approval, we did so acting on a request from the Department to make the investment, and with a degree of obligation and expectation.

We understand that there may be issues we are unaware of, which make the decision more complex than the perspective we have on it. Having said that, we would request that strong consideration be given to finding a means to award the 5 points to all applicants, on the basis of their previously declared intention to fulfil the requirements for these points. As you would be aware, these points are no longer available to any applications made after 1 September 2007, so the effect of any precedent being established is limited to the affected caseload only. We believe that, if you accept that these applicants entered into the system in good faith, then that good faith should be returned now that this problem has arisen.

It is worth remembering that from the point of view of the Migration Program, we are all applicants who, when they applied, prima facie met the requirements for visas. We therefore met the objectives of the program before a series events over which we had no control conspired to complicate matters. As such, we represent a body of people who had a defined and accepted value to the Migration Program. I ask that you accept that our value as potential migrants is overwhelmingly retained. Set against this value, the only negative is the value of funds no longer available to the various state treasuries, which does not seem to outweigh our potential positive contribution to Australia.

We concede that we are not privy to any arguments, which may have been made for reasons to deny the points. Nevertheless, we believe that arguments favouring denial would need to be compelling to overcome the more universal spirit of fairness which, we are sure you will agree, must be the basis for taking any such decisions.

In conclusion, we have three requests to make:
First, we ask for confirmation that the Department has remitted the matter to you, and that you are in the process of determining a resolution to the issue.

Second, if possible, can you provide some indication of when we may hear a decision on how this issue will be resolved?

Third, I ask that you give strong consideration to a resolution that sees the award of the 5 points to these applicants, to allow our applications to proceed to finalisation.

We thank you for your consideration of my request, and look forward to your response.