Migration Alliance members can rest assured everything that you write on this site is being taken into account by DIBP. However, it would be interesting to see if anything is being done about all this feedback.

DIBP hires private sector contractors who can monitor more than ‘half-a-billion pieces’ of social media each day on sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Flickr and blogs, reports The Canberra Times. It however remains unclear what DIBP does with the information as a veil of secrecy surrounds DIBPs dealings in these matters. Nevertheless, it certainly would be useful if their monitors could take into account all this feedback and let us know what is being done about the concerns that are being raised.

According to The Canberra Times, “Several commercially available social media-tracking platforms, some of them in routine use by public service online media teams, can easily track the web activities of protest groups and their individual members".

The newspaper reported that a pro-asylum seeker campaigner, Vanessa Powell said she was intimidated and threatened when DIBP tweeted her about an ‘offensive remark’ it said should be removed from her Facebook thread immediately or the government would ‘consider our options further’.

DIBP’s unfortunate approach in responding to enquiries by registered migration agents (RMAs) has been stifling RMAs ability to properly advance the case of prospective migrants. Applicants have been paying higher DIBP fees in recent years only to have poor service standards dealt out to their professional advisors.

It would seem that the solution to all of this is simple enough: that case officers provide their phone numbers to a migration applicant’s professional advisor, namely the RMA, or provide quicker responses via the Agents Gateway. However, neither have been forthcoming.

The Migration Alliance is concerned that DIBP's Agents Gateway has failed to live up to any respectable service level standards. This has a serious, detrimental, and unfair effect on prospective migrants whose applications are being processed.

RMAs have long complained of DIBP's slow responses, which can take between 2 to 4 weeks for what could very well be straightforward clarifications. But RMAs complaints have fallen on deaf ears. Given this, RMAs in urgent need to attend to genuine concerns have had to rely on DIBP's general phone enquiry line. However, RMAs says that DIBP's operators on these lines have displayed a reckless attitude amounting to contempt for the migration advisory profession.

READ THE COMMENTS FROM OFFSHORE AGENTS ON THIS BLOG:  17/06/2014

When is the DIBP going to do something about unregistered practice?  When is DIBP going to help prevent vulnerable consumers from being duped by the DIBP's 'Offshore ID' status given out to unregistered agents?  These ID's are being used to sell a range of immigration services to unwitting visa applicants, not just students.  

The 'Offshore ID' is paraded around as an endorsement tool by unregistered agents overseas looking to instill confidence and security in potential clients who may be seeking to migrate to Australia.  The issue is that most of the time, the potential clients don't even realise that there is such a thing as a RMA in existence on the planet.  We can thank the OMARA and their $0.00 spend on advertising last financial year for that one.  If migrants see a person with an ID, they, like me, would automatically assume that this person was a government endorsed immigration professional.  Who knows what spin and lies are being sold to these unsuspecting visa applicants about how that 'offshore ID' was obtained.  

I received the following email this week from a RMA who is of Indian heritage (I will keep their ID annonymous):

The Student Visa Program Quarterly Report (December 2013 quarter)  is on the department’s website at: http://www.immi.gov.au/media/statistics/study/.  The March 2014 data should be available by the end of April.

The report of the Review of the Student Visa Assessment Level Framework is available through the following link:

http://www.immi.gov.au/students/_pdf/review-student-visa-assessment-level-framework-2013.pdf

Migration Alliance members would be interested in the latest SIV statistics which were sent today by the  DIBP.  Visa grants to the end of March 2014 are 174 so this is 30 visa grants up from 144 from the end of February 2014.  This is a continuation of the pace from the previous three months.