supposed : " Once an immigrant always an immigrant." Suppose
further, while enjoying the full permission to remain in Australia, after
making his home here he leaves for Italy or India on a visit merely.
So long as the statwle law remains unaltered, he is, in law, on his
return not immigrating, and he may enter unchallenged. But if in
his absence the law is altered, so as to declare him a prohibited
immigrant by a retrospective alteration, express or implied, of the
former permissive law, as at the date of his original entry, has he the
tight to force his way in? Again I apply "Once an immigrant
always an immigrant." We must, of course, carefully discriminate
between the constitutional power and the statute. I apply the
aphorism only to the power, not to the statute. He may not be always
an immigrant, taking the statute as the test; or rather he may not
always, according to that test, be a prohibited immigrant. But,
for the purposes of the power, the aphorism holds without exception.
No fact contrary to the law as it presently exists can ever have
legal effect or override the law itself. Whatever the Federal
Parliament can do or permit, it can undo or recall. If recent
precedent be needed, it is found in the case of Meyer v. Poynton (1).
That case arose under the power as to " naturalization and aliens "
(sec. 51 (xtx.) ). The material circumstances are strikingly apposite.
Meyer, an alien, became naturalized in 1909. At that time the
Naturalization Act 1903 was in force. By sec. 11 the only power to
revoke a certificate of naturalization was if it had been obtained by
any untrue statement of fact or intention. An applicant must, by
sec. 6, declare, inter alia, that he intends to settle in the Common-
wealth. He must also take the oath of allegiance in the form in the
Schedule to the Constitution. He then receives a certificate of
naturalization. Then, says sec. 8, he " shall in the Commonwealth
be entitled to all political and other rights powers and privileges
and be subject to all obligations to which a natural-born British
subject is entitled or subject in the Commonwealth " - certain
reservations are mentioned which are immaterial. That process
transmuted Meyer from an alien to a British subject, and, if anything
could remove him from the alien power of the Constitution, that did