Just out of interest, have any Australian passport-holders here ever applied for a visa (China, Russia, India etc) and been rejected without any reason being given? [Assuming you're not a journalist, convicted criminal, activist etc]
I was surprised to read that for China, for example, the visa fee is non-refundable even if rejected. Which would doubly suck if you have non-refundable plane tickets as well (which have to be purchased before you apply for the visa).
to have your visa application rejected would mean you don't meet the visa application guidelines.
I've never had a visa application rejected - china, russia, schengen, england (ancestral), japan (work), vietnam, czech republic….there's probably a few more but I can't recall.
You'll probably notice on most occasions that the 'visa fee' which you refer to is actually termed an 'application fee'. I believe Australia uses this terminology also.
By them using this language, you are effectively paying a fee to apply for the visa, regardless of that application's outcome.
As any outcome (whether positive or negative) must occur after the application process (which you have paid for with the 'application fee'), the declaration of an outcome means that you have already received the service which you originally paid for. After all, you would've paid for a visa application, not a visa, and this application process would've been well and truly complete by the time a decision is made.
As you've paid for a service which you have in turn received, the granting or refusal of a visa wouldn't have any effect on the application fee's status.
bangladesh refused me entry at airport as i was a risk of not returning… really, i would love to stay here forever earming 1 dollar a day
China visa was surprisingly easy though. And I didn't even have an AU passport
You don't really need confirmed flight bookings though. Reservation from a travel agent would be sufficient from what I heard
My brother had his application rejected (which is weirder than it sounds because he had been studying in Australia in high school and he applied for student visa to continue his study in university, usually those visas are granted easily as the university vouches for you or something like that). That said, they don't have to give you any reasons whatsoever, as not granting a visa is what a country has all the rights to do. Something along the lines of that, or something that resembles that, was what I heard from people from embassy.
Though my brother never stopped to think "maybe I should check this with someone who knows about it", he've probably messed up somewhere. I'd rather let a monkey with an ink bottle tied to his hand to do my paperwork than letting him do it. Sorry if I sound bitter, he've pretty much messed everything that he was in charge of, even within the 1 year after he left, I had at least one major catastrophe with one of the things that I've asked him to do every 6 month (i.e. my insurance, which relates to my student visa, PC, housing etc etc).
Stopping myself digressing, yeah, rejection of visa application can be done, and is done to people, without giving any reasons to the applicants and from what I gather, it's a common practice. The visa fee was also non-refundable (that idiot costed my family north of $1,000 and almost $2,000).