Registered Migration Agents/solicitors should be aware of the Migration Amendment (Regulation of Migration Agenst) Bill 2017 and of the Parliamentary Senate committee recommendation that solicitors no longer be regulated by the Office of the Migration Agent Registration Authority (OMARA).
The Parliamentary Senate committee has been receiving submissions into this matter. I recently stumbled upon a submission which was written by Ms Angela Julian-Armitage, who was the former head of the Northern Territory and Queensland branches of the Migration Institute of Australia (MIA). This was submitted to the Parliamentary Senate Committee on 1 September 2017, strongly arguing for the case that solicitors should remain regulated by OMARA.
MIAParliament.pdf (The MIA submission to Parliament)
The underlying notion that was put to the Parliamentary Senate Committee in Ms Angela Julian-Armitage's submssion, is that OMARA is best placed to continue to regulate registered migration agents and referred specifically to me, Sam Issa, solicitor as the perfect example as to why solicitor should remain regulated by OMARA.
The submission propounds that this would be in the best interest of consumer protection to ensure that solicitors like me, who have been found by OMARA to have engage in migration fraud are to be allowed to continue to practice as solicitors and that OMARA and not the NSW Law Society is best placed to uphold consumer protection.
The submission refers to me as a person who was sanctioned by OMARA and barred from practice as a migration agent for my apparent flagrant attempts to rort the asylum seekers migration program. The submission attaches as ISSAvOMARA (below) the OMARA sanction decision, the Law Society search results confirming that I continue to practice as a solicitor and the Daily Telegraph article of 20 October 2014, headed Migration Agent Banned After Coaching Clients to be Gay at home of mardi gras.
Of course, I appealed this unsubstantiated finding of the OMARA decision at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) and a decision was HANDED DOWN ON 3 JULY 2017, TOTALLY EXONERATNG ME OF ALL THE FRAUD ALLEGATIONS. The only adverse findings was that I had breached certain provisions of the migration agents code of conduct, which bizarrely led the AAT affirm the OMARA decision. Inexplicably, the submission by Ms Angela Julian Armitage, totally ignores the AAT findings, which totally exonerates me of all the allegations of fraud.
The article by Ms Angela Julian-Armitage was written on 1 September 2017 and sent to the Committee Secretary Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, still referring to the fraud findings of OMARA and arguing the case for ongoing duel regulation of solicitors , despite being totally exonerated of all fraud allegations by the AAT approximately two months earlier. This is total madness. Not only has this article totally defamed me but has mislead parliament. I have done a search of Ms Angela Julian –Armitage and discovered that not only was she the former President of the NT and QLD MIA but also a practicing barrister.
This article is designed to mislead parliament and was sent by an organisation which purportedly represents hundreds if not thousands of registered migration agents.
I have sent the attached letter to the Migration Institute of Australia, requesting that they take down defamatory and misleading article the article and formally apologizing to the Australian parliament acknowledging that they had mislead parliament and to offer the Parliamentary senate Committee an unreserved apology.
I have not heard from Ms Angela Julian-Armitage nor from the MIA.
I have instructed my lawyers to begin defamation proceedings and will be filing a formal complaint against ms Angela Julian -Armitage with the Queensland Bar association.