There were some seven hundred fifty partner visas that were cancelled in the last 3 years, but it’s not going to end there. It is expected that this number will continue to rise with the launch of the data-matching program by the Department of Human Services and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. These two government departments combined their individual customer databases to assist in uncovering the different types of fraud, and this includes those by couples who have submitted an application or have already been granted partner visas.
What the system is aiming for is to identify those who are taking welfare payments as singles, even if they already have sponsoring overseas partners and will be checking at applications and grants from the years beginning the year 2012. The Australian immigration department granted forty seven thousand seven hundred fifty two partner visas in the program year that ended 2014, and the largest source nations were the following countries: Britain, China, India, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
These grants as well as other applications are now being verified against nearly 7 million unique records that are all stored in the Centrelink database
According to the figures provided by the Herald Sun report, around seven hundred fifty such visas in the last 3 years have already been cancelled for a breach of conditions such as making fake claims, being of bad character, and providing false or incorrect information.
Mr Peter Dutton, the minister for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, stated that the joint data-matching operation would be able to identify frauds among those who have lodged an application or have already been granted the partner visa.
”Last year, my department identified an increase in the number of allegations relating to the facilitating of contrived marriages,” said Mr Dutton. ”This data-matching program is part of a whole-of-government approach to fraud detection and prevention.”
”People who deliberately take advantage of Australia’s welfare and migration system will be caught.” he added.
itnews.com.au came out with a report noting that under the data matching rules of the Privacy Commissioner’s , DHS and the immigration department need to make public the specifics of their data matching program prior to its kick off. The dataset is going to include each and every one of the applicants for partner visas as well as their sponsors during the years 2012-2013 to 2013-2014.
Source: MigrationAlliance.com.au
