Information about your identity, nationality or citizenship is essential for assessing your claims for protection and completing character and security checks. It is your responsibility to cooperate and confirm your identity so these checks can be done accurately.
Identity requirements
When we ask you to, you must give us true and complete evidence about your identity, nationality or citizenship. These documents can be from your home country or from other places you travelled through or lived in
before you arrived in Australia.
If you do not give us genuine documents as evidence of your identity, nationality or citizenship when we ask for them, you will be asked to explain why. Unless you have a reasonable explanation for not providing these documents, and you then give us such documentary evidence or you have taken reasonable steps to provide such documents, your visa application will be refused.
You will be asked to provide a
certified copy of these documents when you submit your application for a protection visa. If your documents are not in English, you should also organise certified English translations of the documents, from a translator accredited by the
National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI). This is at your own expense.
Documents do not need to be certified if submitted online in ImmiAccount.
You should bring the original documents with you later to your interview.
Documents that you can provide
You should gather original identity documents that were issued to you from a genuine source. This can include any documents that support your claimed identity, nationality or citizenship, such as:
- current and/or expired passports
- birth certificates
- identity cards
- driver's licences
- military or official service papers
- marriage or divorce certificates
- education records
- employment records
- family books.
Other documents you can provide in addition to your identity documents include:
- household bills
- family photos
- registration cards from other countries or the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
These documents should be from before you arrived in Australia.
Bogus documents
We may ask you to show us documents about your identity, nationality or citizenship. If you give us bogus documents when we request these documents, or if you have destroyed or thrown away your documents, you will be asked to explain why.
Unless you have a reasonable explanation for showing us bogus documents or for destroying or throwing away your identity documents, and then give us genuine documents as evidence of your identity, nationality or citizenship or take reasonable steps to give us evidence of your identity, nationality or citizenship, your visa application will be refused.
Any documents you give us that are bogus will be seized and will not be given back to you.
It is a crime in Australia to provide false or forged documents.
Your identity information
We will use information about your identity as part of assessing your claims for protection and completing character and security checks.
Information about you will not be given to authorities in your home country or any other country you are claiming protection from while your protection claims are being assessed or if you are found to engage Australia's protection obligations.
We might give information to other authorised Australian Government agencies or to other organisations where allowed by Australian law. To find out more about how we could use your information, see our Privacy notice.
