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Title

The character bill and migration rights

Author(s)

Betts, Katharine

Abstract

For a decade and a half the executive and the judiciary in Australia have been engaged in a low-key struggle over who should have the final word on questions of immigration control. The Character Bill represents the latest move in this struggle. Its context and content illustrate the different values animating these two arms of government. The Bill aims to protect the community from non-citizens who may be of bad character, particularly people who may be criminals, when they apply for visas. It does this by placing the onus of proof on such people to establish that they are of good character, by limiting their capacity to seek review of character-based decisions to deny them visas (or to cancel visas already issued), and by restricting their access to information about them proved by law-enforcement agencies. In some cases non-citizens who are refused or deprived of visas on character grounds will not have access to natural justice. The Bill throws the conflict between the interests of the Australian community and the interests of some non-citizens into stark relief.

Publication type

Journal article

Research centre

Swinburne University of Technology. Faculty of Life and Social Sciences

Source

People and Place, Vol. 6, no. 3 (1998), pp. 39-53

Publication year

1998

FOR Code(s)

1205 Urban and Regional Planning;  1603 Demography

Keyword(s)

Australia;  Character Bill;  Migration

Publisher

Monash Centre for Population and Urban Research

ISSN

1039-4788

Publisher URL

http://arrow.monash.edu.au/hdl/1959.1/480884

Copyright

Copyright © 1998 Monash University and Katharine Betts. Published version of this paper reproduced with the kind permission of the publisher.

Full text

Peer reviewed