For almost two decades, Abdul has been trying to play the immigration system. Abdul was finally called out by a tribunal recently for repeatedly lying to authorities about his identity. His citizenship application was refused.

But even though Australia doesn’t know who he is, where he was born or how old he is, Abdul (a pseudonym) remains one of the world’s privileged few: his protection visa allows him to live in Australia permanently, access welfare and sponsor relatives overseas to join him.

As Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke prepares an immigration crack down designed to staunch support for One Nation, Abdul’s case is an unusually blatant example of how the Government is forced to spend precious resources policing dishonest applicants while immigrants who could contribute to the economy are forced to wait years for visas.

The lies started in 2007, when his mother applied for humanitarian visas for the family on the basis they were Afghan and Abdul’s father had been taken by the Taliban and never returned during Afghanistan’s civil war.

Not only was the father alive, he had a taste for life. He would have three wives, raise at least six children and pursue an affair with a friend’s 22-year-old wife in Afghanistan, according to evidence presented to the Administrative Review Tribunal.

Two-person marriages are complicated enough without adding in polygamy.

News in the bazaar

In this case, the friend’s second wife found out about the affair and told her husband, who vowed to kill Abdul’s father. The affair was pretty big news in the neighbourhood. The aggrieved husband posted photos of his ex-friend in the local bazaar accusing him of adultery, an offence under God under Islamic law.

Fleeing assassins, Abdul’s family relocated to Pakistan, according to his father, and began working out how to make themselves safe. Not from the Taliban, but an angry husband.

How and when the two men arrived in Australia is not entirely clear. But Abdul, whose identity is protected by law, is illiterate and needs an interpreter to communicate in English, used a people smuggler to travel from Indonesia to Australia, according to the tribunal.

He arrived without any identification, according to the tribunal, and told authorities another made-up story. His father was a member of Afghanistan’s minority Shia Muslim community and murdered his sister, Abdul said he was told, because she married a Sunni man.

The husband’s family were upset, understandably, and wanted revenge. Before they could get it, his father died of natural causes in 1992 or 1993, Abdul said.

The story, which he retracted under questioning from a lawyer at the tribunal hearing, helped Abdul secure a protection visa in 2012 on the basis he could be persecuted if he returned to Afghanistan.

His dishonesty was exposed after he applied for Australian citizenship in 2017. The government realised he used a different name and date of birth to apply for visas in 2007 and 2012. In 2024 he disclosed that his father was alive in Australia, although without the multiple wives.

His application left out that most of his family had already made it over, including his father, who got to Australia in 2010, and a brother and sister, who had already been in Australia for over a decade.

The crackdown

The law says individuals have to prove their identities to become citizens. Authorities have no idea who Abdul really is, an impediment that did not stop him appealing the government’s rejection to the tribunal, which required the department to hire a solicitor and lawyer to fight the case. The tribunal ruled against him this year.

Asked today if the Home Affairs Department intends to deport Abdul for lying on visa applications, a spokesman said he could not comment on individual cases because of privacy rules.

Immigration lawyers say such cases are not unusual. They help explain why Mr Burke is reportedly planning to make it harder for people to appeal decisions to refuse humanitarian visas.

Another one of the problems he may be trying to fix are wives, husbands, parents and children who arrive in Australia on tourist visas and seek residency through the family reunion program. Family members who apply from overseas for residency have to wait years for visas. Applicants seem to have worked this out, and are using the shortcut to get into Australia.

When their holiday visas run out they switch to bridging visas, which have blown out to around 400,000, and never leave. The visas were introduced as an emergency option and few were expected to be needed, according to former immigration department official Abul Rizvi.

“The system is out of control and will take a lot of time, money and intelligent visa redesign to get back under control,” he said today. “The BV (bridging visa) backlog is merely the best indicator of that.”

Immigration has become one of the driving forces in politics, and is blamed for driving up housing prices, making cities crowded and changing Australia’s culture. The resentment has been a major force in One Nation’s surge over the past year, and has forced the two major parties to promise action after decades of quiet agreement that immigration was necessary to compensate for low birth rates.

The Albanese Government says it intends to cut annual immigration to 225,000 by next financial year from around 300,000 today. Reducing the numbers isn’t simple. The law requires certain people to be issued visas and Australians living overseas can return home any time they want. Because groups are worried about losing access to foreign workers, who help lower their costs.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has not set an immigration target, although proposes linking immigration to the number of houses and apartments built every year.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has proposed limiting immigration to 130,000 people a year, and said on Thursday that Australia was “overwhelmed” and needed a “breather”. She also expressed some flexibility in the numerical targets, a pragmatism that should please business.

“I’m not saying 130,000 permanently, you know, on the books,” she told News24. “Let’s review it every year.”

There are two debates going on. Australia must decide how many people can arrive each year, and the attributes of people allowed in.

Senator Hanson has long expressed hostility towards Muslim immigrants. Mr Taylor plans to make visas conditional on abiding by a little-known document called the Australian Values Statement. The document has 10 main requirements, including respecting democracy, freedom of religion, the rule of law and English as the national language.

The Government proudly defends multiculturalism, while refusing to grant visas to people who might stoke social discord based on their public comments.

As for Abdul’s successful quest to reach Australia and join his family, the review tribunal described what it called an “abundance of untruthful information” from him and his father.

“What it can be satisfied about is that the Applicant and his father have been prepared to significantly mislead the immigration authorities to attain a benefit (Australian residency) on completely false bases,” the judgment by tribunal member Kathryn Thornton said.

“This mars the credibility of the Applicant and his father to the extent that the well has been poisoned and the Tribunal is unable to be satisfied about the Applicant’s life story and consequently, his identity.”

Abdul’s lawyer said her client had paid taxes in Australia and had no criminal record.

“He was young and scared,” she said. “He appealed as he wanted to present the truth. He has children born in Australia and he wants the record set straight.”