A Lifetime in Australia: Revoking a Mandatory Visa Cancellation

The challenge

Our client arrived in Australia as a toddler and had lived here ever since, for more than five decades. Australia was the only country he had ever known. He had been educated here, worked here, and raised his family here. In every meaningful sense he was an Australian, but he had never become a citizen.

He also had an extensive criminal history, with over a hundred convictions of varying degrees. After serving a term of imprisonment, his permanent visa was cancelled automatically under the mandatory cancellation provisions of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), on the basis that he failed the character test. A delegate then refused to revoke that cancellation. He faced removal to his country of citizenship, a country he had left as a toddler, where he had never lived as an adult, had no home, no support network, and no real connection.

The legal framework was heavily weighted against him. Under Direction no. 110, the protection of the Australian community is the highest priority, and serious offending weighs heavily against allowing a person to remain. The path to revocation was narrow.

Our approach

We did not seek to downplay the seriousness of our client’s history. In a matter of this kind, credibility is everything, and the case had to be built honestly on the framework the law actually provides.

That framework recognises an important principle: Australia may afford a higher level of tolerance to non-citizens who have lived in the community for most of their lives, or from a very young age. Our client had arrived as a toddler. We placed that principle at the centre of the case and developed it carefully across the evidence.

We then assembled a detailed, independent evidentiary picture directed at the considerations that matter under Direction no. 110:

• Rehabilitation. We documented sustained sobriety, the completion of intensive violence-prevention and substance-abuse programs, and ongoing engagement with treatment, supported by independent psychological assessment. We also arranged for our client to engage appropriately qualified treating professionals.
• Ties to Australia. We presented evidence of a large and supportive family, a restored relationship with his adult child, and the profound impact that removal would have on elderly and vulnerable family members who depended on him.
• Risk and impediments. We engaged with the question of future risk directly through expert evidence, and set out the severe practical reality of removing a person to a country he had never known as an adult, without language, support, or prospects.

The outcome

The Tribunal accepted that several serious considerations weighed against our client. But it was ultimately persuaded that his lifelong connection to Australia, his genuine and continuing rehabilitation, and the strength of his family ties warranted a different result from the one the delegate had reached.

It set aside the delegate’s decision and substituted its own: the mandatory cancellation of our client’s visa was revoked.

A man who had faced removal from the only country he had ever known retained his permanent residence, and his place in his family and community.

Why it matters

Mandatory cancellation matters are among the most difficult in migration law. The framework is deliberately weighted toward refusal, and the threshold for revocation is high. Succeeding requires an unflinching and credible engagement with a difficult history, paired with rigorous, independent evidence of rehabilitation and connection to Australia. It also requires holding firm on a principle the law itself recognises: that a person who has lived in Australia since early childhood has a real claim to remain. For our client, that combination was decisive.

Details in this case study have been anonymised to protect our client’s privacy.