From 1st January 2016, Engineers Australia will be accepting the TOEFL iBT® test as an alternative English Language Test to meet the English language competency element of the Migration Skills Assessment.

Engineers Australia represents one of the largest professions in Australia. In 2014-15, telecommunications engineers were the second largest employment group who gained permanent residence.

Is there anything that you can do to help a student whose visa has expired get another student visa? 

To paraphrase Barrack Obama’s famous campaign slogan from 2008: “Yes you can!” 

However, there is a major caveat that RMAs must be aware of, and that was made clear by a decision of the Full Court in December 2014 (Sapkota v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2014) FCAFC 160 (1 December 2014): You can only do it once! A student who allows her/his visa to expire a second time and then wants to seek a further student visa is in what the first President Bush (George H.W. Bush, not to be confused with his son, “W!) would have described as “deep doo-doo”.  The decision in Sapkota makes it clear that a student who has allowed their visa to expire can have only “one bite of the apple” under the migration legislation.  If they let their visa expire a second time, they are literally “out of luck” – at that stage, the only remedy is to apply for the further student visa from offshore. 

This was the message from the Taiwanese foreign ministry to Taiwanese nationals after noting the increase in the arrests of young people from Taiwan by the Australian police.

In a single police raid last week in Brisbane, 27 Taiwanese were arrested, 25 of them were visiting the country under working holiday visas, one holding a transit visa and another a tourist visa, according to Bob Chen, Deputy Director General of the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry.

It is alleged that the Taiwanese nationals were brought to Australia on false pretences, and then held and told to work to pay back those who paid for their passage to Australia.

Mr Chen said this is not the first time that Taiwanese citizens have been arrested in Australia over alleged involvement in fraud schemes this year. A previous case was reported this August when more than a dozen Taiwanese were arrested on similar charges in Queensland.

Migration Alliance will be holding a Christmas Party in MELBOURNE on Wednesday 2nd December.

Venue:  Kri Kri

Address:  37 - 41 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne

Date:  Wednesday 2nd December

From early December 2015, changes will be made to visa requirements for the subclass 457 visa. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection announced that those applying for the Temporary Work (Skilled) Visa (Subclass 457) will be required to fulfill a number of new obligations in order to be granted the right to work in the country for an approved business for up to four years.  It is anticipated that this change will shed light on some otherwise confusing aspects of the visa process for new immigrants applying to the program.

Under these new regulations, holders of the 457 visa must obtain compulsory licensing or registration within 90 days of arriving in Australia or within the same time frame if they are already in the country when their visa is granted. Holders of the 457 visa must also commence work within 90 days of arriving in Australia or within 90 days of being granted a visa if already in Australia at the time the application was made.

For the requirements on ComLaw see here: https://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2015L01808