It has been over a year since the department of immigration signed an MOU to include Greece in the work and holiday visa (SC462) program. However, the implementation of the program has stalled for some unkown reason.

DIBP is clearly having some issues with some countries in finalising the work and holiday program. A note on the DIBP website states as follows: “The Work and Holiday arrangement with…Vietnam, Israel, Greece and Papua New Guinea will not come in to effect until start dates have been agreed.”

It’s been over a year since Australia and Greece signed an MOU to allow 500 visas to be made available under the sc462 work and holiday visa programme.  Under the program young people aged 18 to 30 from Greece would be eligible to apply for the sc462 visa with similar arrangements for young Australian to work in Greece.

DIBP has provided no explanation for the delay in the implementation of the program which normaly takes about 6 months from the signing of the MOU to come into effect.

Perhaps the estimated A$480 billion Greek debt has got something to do with it. Things are so bad in Greece that some media reports state the people cannot withdraw more than 300Euros a day from Greek banks to prevent a run on the banks. Furthermore, it would seem unlikely that the Greek public would accept any government move to allow foreigners – even if its just 500 – to come work in a struggling economy.

Did you know that your clients could be losing up to 5% of the value of their money when making an international money transfer to Australia?

For a client transferring £100,000 from the UK it can equate up to £5,000 (A$10,000) of their savings being lost in poor conversions rates offered from their bank.

An alternative solution to avoid such losses is to use a regulated foreign exchange company.

Union leaders have been dumped from the Coalition government's skilled migration advisory panel in an effort to stop the “rabid debate” about foreign worker exploitation.

The Ministerial Advisory Council on Skilled Migration (MACSM) has had a major overhaul with three union leaders dumped from the panel which advises the government “on visa and policy settings to optimise the contribution of skilled migration to Australia’s productivity and economy.” Only a single union representative now remains in the panel.

Heading the panel will be Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox who called for an end to the "rabid debate" over the alleged exploitation of foreign workers after being appointed to head the Abbott government's advisory panel on skilled migration.

Speaking to The Australian, Mr Willox said the previous council became bogged down in a "quite a destructive discussion" about 457 visa workers.

"We need to shift the debate," he said. "We had a rabid debate through 2012-13 on the whole issue of skilled migration and we need to shift the agenda a bit to have a holistic view around skilled migration's role in the overall skills mix, how it fits in with the training agenda and what the needs of business are, both in the short and long term," he said.

Mr Willox said he believed there were adequate safeguards currently to ensure any abuse of foreign workers could be detected and acted upon.

Recently we have experienced a high volume of complaints from migration agents about "Customer Service Manager" being refused under sc457 nominations.  The refusals are always due to 'non-genuine' criteria.

Reports in from RMAs state that case officers are 'assuming' things and making decisions on their own assumptions.

RMAs want better goalposts around what is and what is not considered 'genuine'.  Different case officers have different opinions and there is no uniform decision making.

Lodge your applications now or face higher Visa charges and more trouble in loading it up over the next few weeks. DIBP has issued a statement warning of a number of significant system outages in the next few weeks.

It has warned there will be more system outages not only because of the system upgrades but also due to the expected overload in online applications.

“It is your responsibility to manage the completion of online lodgments, with the outage timeframes and potential system delays in mind. The department will take no responsibility for any negative consequences as a result of the outages” noted a statement from the DIBP.

With paper applications, the DIBP statement warns further that “It is your responsibility to ensure that you give yourself enough time for paper applications to be received by the department before 1 July 2015. Paper applications received post 1 July 2015 will incur the new VACs.”

As announced in the budget, the government will raise AU$440 million in revenue by increasing visa and citizenship charges on the argument that applicants should meet the full cost of the service.

Details of the imminent price hikes were recently provided by the DIBP include the following: