A MILDURA man who claimed he was assaulted by the Taliban before being illegally smuggled into Australia has failed in a bid to overturn a refusal for citizenship.
The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) heard that at the time of the man’s arrival to Australia in December 2010, he claimed to be a citizen of Afghanistan and made a claim for a protection visa from that country.
In 2013, he was issued with a Titre De Voyage which allows refugees to travel out of and back into the country, and subsequently applied for Australian Citizenship.
That was refused by the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs (Citizenship) in 2023 on the basis that it could not be satisfied as to the applicant’s identity and was therefore prohibited from approving the application under the Citizenship Act.
The applicant claimed he was a citizen of Afghanistan when he fled in 1990 due to the civil war in that country and settled in Quetta, Pakistan for the next 16 years where he resided with his wives and 14 children.
The man, who claimed to be 71 years of age, said he went back to Afghanistan in 2006 to attempt to settle a land dispute before returning to Pakistan in 2009 after facing harm in Afghanistan at the hands of the Taliban.
The man said the Taliban had attended his premises in Afghanistan on one occasion demanding money, on a second occasion demanding household items and on a third occasion taking him away and beating him before he escaped to Pakistan.
He said that when killing started in Pakistan he decided to leave that country.
The Tribunal heard that during his time in Pakistan he was able to obtain a Pakistani national identity card at great cost and in due course he obtained a Pakistani passport.
Using this passport, he left Pakistan in 2010 and entered Iran and then using this passport he obtained a visa to travel to Malaysia and then Indonesia to meet with smugglers so that he could join a boat bound for Australia.
The applicant claimed that his Pakistani documents were thrown overboard by the smugglers on his journey to Australia.
When he arrived at Christmas Island and made it known that he wished to apply for refugee protection he was initially going to apply on the basis of being Pakistani.
However, a migration agent later told him while in detention that as his Pakistani documents had been obtained through paying money, he would be considered an Afghan citizen and not a Pakistani citizen.
He then claimed protection against Afghanistan and his application was approved at primary stage.
But when the man’s daughter applied for a Partner visa she declared that she was a citizen of Pakistan and that her Pakistani passport listed her father as a Pakistani national, as did her Pakistani national identity card and Pakistani birth certificate.
AAT senior member John Cipolla said the issue of identity was not one to be taken lightly.
“The decisions of the Tribunal recognise that the issue of identity is of significant importance because of the wide range of benefits that are conferred on a person through the grant of Australian citizenship,” he said.
The Tribunal found that the applicant and his daughter and his wife had all given inconsistent evidence on critical information about to family composition, children who are stepchildren or biological children and respective dates of birth of family members.
Mr Cipolla said that following consideration of the evidence “both singularly and cumulatively”, the Tribunal could not be satisfied of the applicant’s identity and therefore confirmed refusal of the man’s application for Australian citizenship.
