Digital Passenger Declarations
Passenger Declaration (DPD). This is a form that must be filled out online prior to your arrival or departure. The DPD asks for information such as your name, passport number, and date of birth. Completing the DPD is important because it helps customs officials process your arrival or departure quickly and smoothly. Failing to fill out the DPD can result in long wait times at the airport and possible delays. So make sure you complete the DPD before your trip!
Australia has long been a popular destination for tourists, and with the increasing digitization of travel documents and processes, passenger declarations are more important than ever. In order to ensure that your trip goes as smoothly as possible, it is important to familiarize yourself with the requirements for digital passenger declarations. Here we will provide an overview of what you need to know before flying to Australia.
The Australian Government has introduced Digital Passenger Declarations – what does this mean for you?
Everyone who has ever flown into Australia previously would remember the yellow passenger cards they were required to fill out before landing, and as of 21 February 2022 you can say goodbye to the sweet simplicity of being handed a tiny pencil and a yellow card by a grumpy and sleep deprived flight attendant, before filling it out while desperately thirsty and at the same time in need of the toilet.
Because those days are over! The Australian Government has recently announced that travellers to Australia will need to submit a digital passenger declaration within 7 days of their flight. These can be filled out online, or through the fancy new app, which we’re sure will be very good.
Australia, like many countries around the world, has taken the disruption and necessary responses to COVID-19 as an opportunity to finally embrace the 21st century, integrating digital technology and services in order to bring you more convenience, increase efficiency and more strict Government oversight and enforcement mechanisms.
With Convenience Comes Greater Oversight
Digital Data Matching allows Government Departments to quickly communicate between each other, and access each others’ records in order to find inconsistencies. Previously, Officers of the Department of Home Affairs, when processing your visa application, had to send a request to archives for copies of previous passenger cards, which took time and follow-through on the part of the individual case officer. Often, applicant’s who had falsely ticked ‘no’ on their card in relation to character or health issues wouldn’t get picked up for months, if at all. Digitisation in this context allows the Department of Home Affairs to either refuse or cancel your visa that much faster.
It can also have implications regarding ‘Public Interest Criteria – 4020’, the provision of false and misleading information or a bogus document/s in a visa application. Public interest criteria are essentially the hidden criteria of a visa application, and just going off the information available on the immigration website, you wouldn’t know how important they are until your visa is refused or cancelled for breaching this criteria. This why it is important to seek advice and counsel from professionals.
Sadly, this is how the majority of applicant’s learn about this criteria, a common scenario being:
The Applicant originally came to Australia on a short-term visa they’d applied for themselves, they had some minor previous criminal convictions that received a suspended sentence and were apparently removed from the record. They said ‘no I don’t have any criminal convictions’, on their visa application and incoming passenger declaration card.
The Applicant likes Australia, they decide to apply for a more long-term visa. They find out online that those old convictions actually do count. In the interest of being honest, they declare their convictions on their new visa application.
Because they ticked ‘no I don’t have any criminal convictions’ on their first visa application, their new application is refused based on PIC4020. They are barred from making an application for most substantive visas for 3 years.
Breaching Public Interest 4020 puts applicants in a whole load of trouble. Generally, a visa decision can be reviewed, but in this case, once it’s been established that you knowingly or unknowingly provided false information, your only chance of having the condition waived is to claim that there are compassionate and compelling circumstances effecting an Australian Citizen which justify waiving the criteria. As you can imagine, that’s not an easy thing to prove, especially considering previous tribunal decisions have suggested a telephone as a reasonable substitute to playing an active role in the life of your partner.
So What Does This Mean?
The incoming changes present a new challenge to potential visa or citizenship applicants, as the Passenger declarations rarely come with explanatory material, and it’s extremely common for an applicant to think that a minor conviction with a suspended sentence doesn’t really matter, especially when it wasn’t shown on a police check.
When data matching began between the Department of Immigration and Centrelink in 2015, many partner visa applicants were refused on the basis that their sponsor hadn’t declared their relationship to Centrelink. If that experience is anything to go off, we can probably expect a spike in visa cancellations due to false declarations, especially as the program becomes fully functional and the data analytics capability of the Department of Home Affairs increases.
How Can Agape Henry Crux Help You?
If you have found yourself caught out by PIC4020 or any other immigration issue, please do not hesitate to contact us. You can book a Migration Planning Session with one of our immigration lawyers to seek professional advice by calling 02-7200 2700 or email us to book in a time at info@ahclawyers.com.
We speak fluent English, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Indonesian, Burmese and Malay. If these aren’t your language, we can also help you arrange an interpreter.
This article/presentation (“publication”) does not deal extensively with important topics or changes in law and is not intended to be relied upon as a substitute for legal or other advice that may be relevant to the reader's specific circumstances. If you find this publication of interest and would like to know more or wish to obtain legal advice relevant to your circumstances please contact our office.