SZNOE & Anor v Minister for Immigration and Citizenship

[2012] HCASL 83

SZNOE & ANOR

v

MINISTER FOR IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP & ANOR

[2012] HCASL 83
B14/2012

1. The applicants are married.  They are citizens of India.

2. On 9 April 2009, the Refugee Review Tribunal ("the Tribunal") dismissed an application for review of a decision by a delegate of the first respondent.  That decision refused the applicants' joint application for protection visas.  The husband is a Hindu and the wife is a Sikh.  The husband claims to be a lower-caste Hindu.  He claims that his family came from Pakistan and obtained a 50-year lease over some land in 1957.  He claims that higher-caste Hindus began to discriminate against immigrants like his family.  He claims that he and his father were attacked by higher-caste Hindus while working in the fields.  He claims that his wife's family opposed his relationship with and marriage to his wife, and that his wife's father threatened him in various ways.  He claims that the authorities connived with his persecutors.  He claims that the authorities took no action in response to his complaints.   

3. The Tribunal was troubled by the vague and undetailed nature of the applicants' accounts.  It found that there was no land dispute with upper-caste Hindus or anyone else.  It also found that no attacks associated with a land dispute took place.  These findings were based in large measure on demeanour-based credibility findings.  The Tribunal also denied that the applicants' inter-faith/inter-community marriage had created problems for them.  It based this finding partly on its assessment of the applicants' credibility and partly on objective circumstances.  In addition, the Tribunal rejected the husband's claims that he and his family had experienced discrimination as "lower-caste Hindus" or "migrated residents".  Finally, the Tribunal rejected his claim that the police had denied him protection.  It found that the husband had no well-founded fear of  Convention-related persecution in India.  The applicant wife's claims were dependent on those of her husband and failed with them.

4. The applicants sought judicial review in the Federal Magistrates Court (Burnett FM).  Burnett FM rejected the applicants' submission that "the Tribunal failed to specifically consider the question of whether the applicant [husband] had a well founded fear of persecution on the basis of the particular conjunction of being a lower-caste Hindu and land ownership."  Burnett FM also held that even if the submission were sound, it was immaterial in view of the Tribunal's comprehensive factual findings on these matters.  Hence the applicants had failed to demonstrate any jurisdictional error.

5. The applicants appealed to the Federal Court of Australia (Greenwood J).  Their appeal was dismissed.  Greenwood J found that Burnett FM was correct to conclude that the Tribunal had not fallen into jurisdictional error. 

6. The papers filed in support of the applicants' application for special leave to appeal to this Court are pro forma in character.  They make allegations that have nothing to do with the history of these proceedings.  They do not focus on Greenwood J's reasoning.

7. There are no prospects of an appeal succeeding were special leave to be granted.

8. The application is dismissed.

9. Pursuant to r 41.10.5 we direct the Registrar to draw up, sign and seal an order dismissing the application.

J.D. Heydon
20 June 2012 V.M. Bell