2016-Aug 05: Original Police Certificates

Visa Pak 271: Clarification for staff regarding the acceptance of police certificates for residence applications if they were submitted with a temporary visa applications submitted online.

Visa Paks

05 August 2016

Original Police Certificates

With the introduction of Immigration ONLINE, the question has been raised regarding the acceptance of police certificates held in the Document Management System (DMS) for residence applications if they are less than six months old.

Immigration instructions at A13.1 state that all documents submitted in support of an application must be originals unless A13.1.b applies.

Where a police certificate has been submitted through Immigration ONLINE for a temporary visa application and is held in the DMS, this may only be accepted for lodgement purposes for a residence application if the police certificate is less than six months old (A5.10.a) or up to 24 months old (if A5.10.d.iv applies).

Only appropriately delegated staff may accept the copy held in the DMS by waiving the requirement that the document supplied is an original for lodgement purposes only. The original police certificate will need to be requested in order to process the residence application.

This will mitigate any risk of tampering with the document prior to uploading to support a temporary application.

Update AMS Character Tab

Immigration officers must update the Character tab in AMS with the police certificate details for all applications. This includes both original and copied/scanned police certificates.

For residence applications, however, you must confirm that an original police certificate was received with the previous application when relying on the information provided by the Character tab.