Australian Immigration Daily News

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It has finally happened!

On 21 June 2017, the Turnbull Government introduced legislation (the “Migration Amendment (Regulation of Migration Agents Bill) 2017”) into the House of Representatives that, if enacted, would end the dual regulation of lawyers by the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority.

The Kendall Report, which was issued on 24 September 2014, and which detailed the results of a study of the functions of the MARA that was commissioned by then-Assistant Minister Michaelia Cash, had made a recommendation that the system of dual regulation by  the MARA be ended.  However, legislation to implement this change had not been widely circulated until the introduction of the bill last week.

Migration Alliance members received a number of alerts concerning legislative changes in lead up to 1 July.  To assist all of our members during this busy period, below is one stop summary of key changes anticipated to take place this Saturday:

1)      Planned (and unplanned System Outages)

We are mere 5 days away from 1 July and the changes to immigration requirements are becoming clearer.  Here is a summary update in relation to some of the changes announced recently:

Imagine that you were asked to comment on the chances that a Registered Migration Agent could avoid disciplinary action  - in the form of cancellation of his registration  - in the following scenario:

The RMA has the following “track record”:

• Found by the AAT to have been a “key player” in an attempt to mislead the Trades Recognition Authority by providing a false work reference for a visa applicant;
• Disqualified from acting as a “law associate” of a legal practitioner or law practice by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal by lying to a magistrate and a barrister by holding himself out to be a legal practitioner when in fact his application for admission as a legal practitioner had been rejected on the basis that he had failed to disclose that he had been charged for perjury and theft and had been convicted in the UK on counts of handling stolen goods, forgery and obtaining property by deception;
• Had his registration as a tax agent terminated by the Tax Practitioners Board on the basis that he had ceased to meet the requirement of being a “fit and proper person”;
• Has been permanently banned by ASIC from engaging in work as a finance broker after it was found that he had provided misleading information and had not made full disclosure on a credit licence application;
• Had submitted an application to the MARA for renewal of his registration as a migration agent which was false or misleading in a material particular because he had failed to disclose in his application for repeat registration that the Tax Practitioners Board had made a decision to terminate his registration as a tax agent; and
• Was found by the MARA to have engaged in a pattern of dishonest conduct in his dealings with the MARA, the ASIC and the Tax Practitioners Board by representing himself to be a legal practitioner when he had not been admitted to practice as a lawyer.

Against such a background, would you “reckon” that this person’s “goose was cooked”?