Australian Immigration Daily News

On Thursday, 10 December 2020, 2pm AEDT, the cardholder authentication security function will be activated for payments made with cards issued by Australian financial institutions only. 

When you pay via debit or credit card:

• You must enter the address of the cardholder into the payment screen in ImmiAccount.
• The cardholder’s bank may require that you complete a card authentication challenge. 

The payment transaction will fail if:

Trades Recognition Australia will be closed for the Christmas/New Year period.

The Trades Recognition Australia Enquiry Line will close at 4pm, Wednesday 23 December 2020 and will reopen at 10am, Monday 4 January 2021.

All enquiries during this time can be emailed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Please note that enquiries will not be actioned before Monday 4 January 2021.

Engineers Australia will shut down during Christmas and New Year between 24th December 2020 and 10th January 2021.

Applications lodged between 7th December 2020 and 31st January 2021 are expected to be affected by the shutdown period and may experience a service delay. Fast Track may take longer than the advertised 20 working days to be claimed by an assessor but will be addressed first. 

Source: https://www.engineersaustralia.org.au/For-Migrants/Migration-Skills-Assessment/Migration-Announcements

The Australian Government is yet to allocate nomination quotas to states and territories for the 2020/21 program year.

The Northern Territory (NT) was provided a very small interim allocation, which has now been depleted. This means that the NT Government is currently unable to issue nominations under the General Skilled Migration (GSM) program.

In light of this, the NT GSM program is now suspended until further notice for all new applications. Applications for nomination under the Business Investment and Innovation Program remain open.

The Australian Border Force (ABF) is pleased to advise that the first tranche of 120 modern slavery statements (statements) submitted to the ABF’s Online Register under the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (the Act) have now been published. A media release from the Assistant Minister for Customs, Community Safety and Multicultural Affairs, the Hon Jason Wood MP, announcing the publication of these statements is available here. 

The publication of these first statements marks a new era of business transparency and is a vital step forward for Australia’s efforts to eradicate modern slavery in our supply chains. These statements have been submitted before the legislative deadline for reporting, which varies from 31 December 2020 to 30 June 2021 depending on the financial year of the reporting entity.   

The ABF is closely monitoring the quality of statements and has released two additional guidance notes to highlight good practice reporting trends and common reporting errors and provide additional clarity around describing consultation processes in statements.