Australian Immigration Daily News

The Joint Standing Committee on Migration will discuss education agents at a public hearing on 19 September 2018 in Canberra.  This will be part of its inquiry into the efficacy of current regulation of Australian migration agents.  

The inquiry is examining issues including:

• examining the registration and regulation of migration agents in Australia including: education, English proficiency, payment, fee-scheduling as well as the suitability and stringency of the accreditation process and evidence of deficiencies.

• the nature and prevalence of fraud, professional misconduct and other breaches by registered migration agents, the current review mechanisms for migration agents and the adequacy of penalties.

• deficiencies and barriers to relevant authorities' investigation of fraudulent behaviour by registered migration agents in visa applications, including the adequacy of information and evidence sharing between such authorities.

Source: Committee-to-discuss-education-agents-19-Sept.pdf

Over the course of this week, the Department has released a number of legislative updates applicable to variety of visa subclasses.    These updates include the following.

1.         Eligible Passports

Instrument Immi 18/002: Eligible Passports commenced operating this week.  The instrument specifies that under section 175A of the Act, the Government is able to specify that a kind of passport is an “eligible passport” for the purposes of Division 5 of Part 2 of the Act. Division 5 of Part 2 of the Act regulates the immigration clearance of persons entering Australia. The determination specifies that all valid passports are “eligible passports” with the exceptions of travel documents with certain characteristics.  Specifically this instrument is substantively the same as the instrument it repeals (IMMI 14/079) except for the following two changes:

The battle against child exploitation and abuse will be substantially boosted with the opening of the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) in Brisbane today.  Abuse of children is a global epidemic that is becoming more prevalent, more organised and more extreme.

The Minister for Home Affairs, Hon Peter Dutton MP says the following:

"The ACCCE will be at the centre of a collaborative national approach to combatting organised crime led by the AFP with oversight from the Transnational, Serious and Organised Crime (TSOC) Coordinator Deputy Commissioner Karl Kent.

The following is the 'Morrison Ministry'.

Migration Alliance members will be interested to learn that the new Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs (DICMA) is now David Coleman MP.  Importantly this position is NOT in Cabinet.  

Alex Hawke MP has been moved to Special Minister of State and is no longer the Assistant Immigration Minister.

The Department of Home Affairs has published their first round of skill select invitations for the new financial year and the figures are looking bleak.  The first round of invitations was sent on 11 July 2018 to potential applicants.  As reported previously, Home Affairs confirmed that invitation rounds will be issued once per month however, this will not impact the number of invitation issued.  The July figures seem to contradict the following statement issued via skill select: 

Posted on: 25/07/2018 at 00:01

SkillSelect invitation rounds for Skilled - Independent (subclass 189) and Skilled - Regional Provisional (subclass 489) will occur once each month, on the 11th day of each month, effective 11 August 2018. There is no change to the overall number of invitations provided each month.