Migrant law bid aims to send violent crims back home

THOUSANDS more foreignborn criminals will be deported under tough new measures that will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The far reaching changes to the Migration Act will see every non-citizen who commits a sexual or violent crime being deported, whether they are jailed or not.

At present one of the most used triggers for mandatory visa cancellation is that the offender must be sentenced to jail for 12 months or more.

The new visa-scrapping legislation will apply to any person – including children – convicted of an offence for which they can be jailed for two years or more, even if they escape a jail term, as many do, or are sentenced to less than 12 months.

Offences include domestic violence, breaching an apprehended violence order, carjackings, home invasions and possession of a weapon.

Almost 4000 convicted crooks have already been deported in the past four years under the current and much narrower character test system – with the visas of 907 foreignborn criminals being scrapped in the past financial year.

Australian Institute of Criminology researchers recently forensically examined the circumstances of 184 of those criminals and found cancelling just those few visas saved taxpayers

$100 million.

The new legislation is expected to be introduced into federal Parliament by the Morrison Government as early as this week and it will apply to thousands more perverts, wifebeaters and violent thugs.

Former Victoria Police officer and now chairman of the more than Federal Joint Standing Committee on Migration, Jason Wood, is the driving force behind the legislation.

He said Victoria’s Sudanese gang members would come under the legislation if they weren’t born in Australia, as well as bikies. Members of both groups have already had their visas cancelled before now.