ABSTRACT
Under Australian immigration law, the immigration Minister must refuse to grant a protection visa to an asylum seeker if the asylum seeker provides a ‘bogus document’ as evidence of ‘identity, nationality, or citizenship’. A protection visa must also be refused if the Minister is satisfied the asylum seeker disposed of or destroyed evidence of identity without having a ‘reasonable explanation’ for the destruction of documents, or without providing new documents. The effect of these provisions, introduced in 2015, is that anyone found to provide the Immigration Department with a bogus identity document cannot also be granted a protection visa. The Migration Act 1958 (Cth) defines the term ‘bogus document’ but leaves the terms ‘bogus’ and ‘document’ undefined. The provisions, and their significant effects for those seeking refugee protection, raise a number of questions, including: when is a document an identity document, what makes a document bogus, when is a document destroyed and, critically, is it correct to infer that ‘real’ refugees do not use ‘fake’ documents? This chapter will explore the nascent jurisprudence on bogus documents under Australian refugee and migration law, with a focus on practices of proof in determining whether a document is bogus or ‘real’, and on the nexus between rhetoric regarding ‘the bogus refugee’ and the judging of documents as ‘bogus’ as a barrier to refugee status and protection.
