The applicant is a citizen of Indonesia who had been granted a visitor visa in 2009. During that time, she was employed to provide full-time care to an impaired nine year old child, cohabiting with his family.

Driven by a desire to address the lack of care options available in her home country, the applicant sought to study Disability and Community Service courses in Australia. Accordingly, she applied for a subclass 572 student visa. This was refused by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, which found that she was not a genuine student’ due to her substantial care responsibilities for the child.

ISL was instructed to appeal this decision to the Migration Review Tribunal. We were successful in establishing to the Tribunal that the applicant was a genuine student’ by demonstrating an improvement to the child’s health , which had alleviated the applicant’s care responsibilities. Further, we submitted evidence of the applicant’s genuine passion for her chosen area of study, as demonstrated not only by her enrolment in relevant educational courses, but also her paid and volunteer work in the field.

Upon this evidence, the Tribunal decided to overturn the Department’s decision to refuse the student visa.