2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(1) matter of practice, she was ineligible for Zimbabwean citizenship, satisfying s 21(8). 29 IV HOLDING AAT Deputy President Bernard J McCabe determined the applicant was not entitled to acquire Zimbabwean citizenship and was entitled to obtain Australian citizenship under s 21(8). 30 The decision may be distilled down to the fact that although the applicant may have theoretically been eligible to obtain Zimbabwean citizenship, the administrative practices of the Zimbabwean government made this actually impossible. 31 Deputy President McCabe also held that, even if there were failures on the part of the applicant’s mother to pursue all avenues towards registering the applicant’s birth with the Zimbabwean authorities, the practical obstacles that had been placed in her path led him to conclude that she had done all that she reasonably could. 32 Taking the applicant as she was in her current circumstances, 33 and to prevent her exploitation as a stateless minor, 34 he determined that any failings on the part of the applicant’s mother should not disentitle the applicant to citizenship under s 21(8). 35 V REASONING AND ANALYSIS A The Reasonable Steps Test The AAT endorsed the decision in Re KKRG and Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (‘Re KKRG’) 36 in holding that there may be matters in which the practical obstacles to obtaining citizenship ‘effectively put citizenship out of reach’, 37 with the effect that the applicant ‘is “not entitled to acquire” citizenship in the sense intended by the Act notwithstanding the existence of a formal legal right’. 38 In Re AP and Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (‘Re AP’), 39 Senior Member PW Taylor SC noted that Australian citizenship should not be refused where there was ‘irrefutable evidence that the person had no prospect of satisfying the procedural and administrative citizenship application requirements of the relevant foreign country’. 40 The AAT in Re DLSV applied the test in Re KKRG to the effect that ‘a person is not genuinely entitled to acquire the citizenship of another country if the application requirements “are so onerous as to undermine or negate the 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 ibid [36]. ibid [59]. ibid [57]. ibid. ibid. ibid. ibid. [2015] AATA 635 (27 August 2015) (‘Re KKRG’). Re DLSV (n 2) [49]. ibid. [2014] AATA 706 (29 September 2014) (‘Re AP’). ibid [56]. 180