Migration Alliance has become aware that RMA Anthony Ross' identity has been stolen and has been used by a person by the name of Vipul Pandit. 

The attached documentation shows the length and depth of the scam by Mr Pandit who has conned one client, Gaurav Patel (permissions granted).

Anthony Ross has, since discovering the rort, reported this to the NSW police, DIBP and Office of the MARA.   Interestingly whilst trying to report the fraud on the OMARA website over the weekend, the OMARA website was not working and unable to take the report despite repeated attempts to do so.

This story comes vourtesy of Tanaya DAS and Karl Konrad (RMA).

Migration Alliance has previously run stories about Singapore Oil and Eddy Kang on this website:

The Sydney Morning Herald has revealed that that blacklists of immigration lawyers and agents compiled by the Department of Immigration are still being used, despite government promises they had been removed.

“Documents dated late May show the lists are still being used to rate applicants for partner visas according to which lawyer or agent they have acting on their behalf. The document shows the lists remain part of a "risk tiering tool" that adds three points to an application and may affect the outcome. (The more points, the higher risk rating the application receives.)” reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

However, DIBP has again denied the lists are still in use. A DIBP Spokesperson said, “Consistent with previous statements, the agents-of-concern lists were removed from use last year as the information was out of date.”

The department had previously said the lists were created in 2010 and were supposed to have been destroyed. The discovery of the blacklists prompted a departmental audit.

The discovery of the lists also prompted calls for the Commonwealth Ombudsman to investigate.

The following has just been received by Migration Alliance from the MRT-RRT:

Dear Community Liaison Network members

I am pleased to provide the community liaison update for August 2014 in this new format.

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome some of our new members to the community liaison network and to thank our current membership for their continuing support in attending community liaison network meetings.

As you know we concluded the first round of community liaison network meetings for 2014 in May 2014.  The minutes from those meetings are available on our website in the community liaison archives.  I encourage you to review these minutes as they provide information on a range of relevant topics, including the RRT Practice Direction.

Any feedback you would like to provide about these updates is welcome. If you have any suggestions or comments, please forward them to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Announcement Stakeholder Engagement Statement The tribunals have developed a new Stakeholder Engagement Statement. The Stakeholder Engagement Statement sets out our commitment to providing a professional and courteous service to review applicants and other persons who come into contact with the tribunals. The tribunals aim to treat everyone with courtesy, respect and dignity, as outlined in our Service Charter.

Announcement Caseload report to 31 July 2014 The tribunals have begun the 2014-15 financial year on a positive note with over 2,000 decisions made in July.  MRT decisions were slightly below lodgements providing a 91% clearance rate for the month, while almost three times as many RRT decisions were made as lodgements received, giving a clearance rate of 272% for the RRT for the month.

Announcement Member recruitment The tribunals welcomed 17 newly appointed members in July.  Each member has been appointed for a three year term. Their appointments are expected to boost the tribunals’ decision-making capacity, adding initially to the focus on protection and partner caseloads over the next 12 months.

Report Online lodgements Since the implementation of the tribunals’ online lodgement facility, over 5570 applications have been lodged electronically, with more than 60% of applications now being lodged online.

Kind regards,

Kay Ransome
Principal Member

If you have any queries or feedback please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
For further information about the MRT-RRT, please visit our website.

Professional-Development-Ingram-update.pdf

See above for the new legislative instrument which prescribes the Practice Ready Programme as a mandatory activity (see the attached IMMI 14/038) as at yesterday's date 14 August 2014.

We are gathering more information at the moment and will write a full story and summary on this change this afternoon.

Interestingly there was no announcement about this change from the Office of the MARA yesterday.