Our client, together with his family, was selected for resettlement in Australia as a refugee. At the time our client was aged 13. Our client experienced adjustment problems in Australia. He soon left school and left his family to live on the streets. In the resulting years our client was charged with a number of offences, to which he pleaded guilty.  Immigration then ordered that our client be deported under section 200 of the Migration Act. This provision allowed any non-citizen who has been in Australia for less than 10 years and has been convicted of an offence for which he has been sentenced to imprisonment to be deported.

Our involvement

We constructed a line of argument that while there was a risk of some low level reoffending, this risk should not be classified as a serious one. Using various testimonies, we were able to convince the Administrative Appeals Tribunal that our client would suffer significant hardship, as would his immediate family, if he were deported. Our client’s family ties were now all in Australia. Supplementing this legal argument, we persuaded the Tribunal that it would not be placing the safety and security of the community at risk by allowing our client to stay in this country.

As a result, the Tribunal gave the direction that our client should not be deported from Australia