Unrepresented and Non-English speaking Appellants | November 29 2019
A good win for unrepresented and non-English speaking Appellant’s who appear before the Court in migration matters.
In a recent Federal Court case, an unrepresented, non-English speaking Appellant was found to have been denied procedural fairness by the Federal Circuit Court. The Court found the following issues with the inferior Court’s decision:
- The Appellant was unrepresented before the Federal Circuit Court.
- The oral decision provided by the Federal Circuit Court was not interpreted to the Appellant who was of a non-English speaking background.
- The Appellant had no understanding of why the Court dismissed his case.
- There was no evidence that the Minister’s submissions were interpreted to the Appellant.
- The Federal Circuit Court failed to provide any formal, publicly available reasons for its decision until after the expiration of the appeal period to the Federal Court.
- The Appellant was denied reasonable and timely access to the Federal Circuit Court’s decision.
The combination of these factors resulted in the Federal Court finding that the inferior court had denied the Appellant procedural fairness and due to the seriousness of this issue, the decision was sent back to the Federal Circuit Court to be heard and determined according to law.
Please see case below:
