This story has sparked my personal interest because I used to work for Liam Clifford (pictured above) at Global Visas, UK, before I became a Registered Migration Agent.
When I was 21 I moved to the UK and started working in various firms offering immigration advice for Australia, NZ, Canada, the USA and the UK. I was not a registered agent at the time, and we really had no clue of the legislation. In fact, during my early twenties my immigraton advice to clients was straight from the policy booklets, and even then, the Australian immigration booklets were not read properly. The objective of being at work was to make sales. The Director ruled by fear. Fear of job loss.
When I worked for Global Visas in 2000/2001, I distinctly remember Liam (Director of Global Visas), turning up to work on a motorbike and coming in to the office with his bike helmet, hair messy, asking us to 'get on the phones'. That meant 'make sales' and 'get deals'.
I worked with some amazing people, but none of them were registered, and Global Visas was making bucketloads of money. Clients would come from everywhere to the fancy Oxford Street, London address to pay unregistered agents like me, who knew nothing about Australian Immigration Law to make their new life dreams a reality.
One of my lasting memories from Global Visas is this. I had been talking to a colleague and Liam came in with a fierce and angry look on his face. He said the following: 'Liana, get on the f**ing phone and stop f****ing talking. Do you know what your colleagues will think if they see you f***ing not working? They will think they can do the same. F***ing work will you!'.
I was trained by a French man who used to listen in to my phone calls using an extension plug-in phone line. He would assess my sales calls to the potential clients, and force me to cut down the length of my calls to become short, blunt, to the point and ask for money. We were provided with scripts to follow and our primary focus was to close the sale as fast as possible. Any questions were to be responded with 'that's why you pay us so that you don't need to worry about that' or words to that effect.
That should have been my wake-up call. But at that time I was too young and naive, and scared about my own immigration status to leave.
Three months later I left. The place was a raging immigration sales factory full of people from all over the world selling visas for all different types of countries. Much like the Wolf of Wall Street but the immigration version. I was sponsored by the company as a 'Business Development Manager' at the time, on a UK work permit. I had previously been sponsored by two different but equally dodgy immigration companies.
Let me tell you about those first two businesses.
The first company sponsored me because I had an Australian accent and was able to sell Australia as a great place to live. That was First Point International Ltd. The
Directors of this company were struck off, the CEO was
arrested in the USA for tax and immigration fraud by INS officials, and Inland Revenue UK were chasing them for unpaid taxes because their 'management company' was in Nassau, the Bahamas and they were not declaring the income. I assisted the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the USA embassy at the time. I worked with them and provided evidence and statements to assist them with the arrest of my own boss, David Morris Webster. David was arrested at Orlando Airport and then ankle-tagged, and out on USA$1 million bail, unable to leave the State of Florida.
First Point International went into liquidation. I requested my personnel file from HR before I left the office and was horrifed to learn that my own UK work permit had been fraudulently obtained. False references in the application about having worked at the First Point International Orlando Office were in the file. At that point in my life I had never been to the mainland of the United States, let alone worked at First Point in the USA. First Point International had applied for my work permit for me (I was never allowed to see the application) on the basis of an inter-company transfer from the USA to the UK. Of course, I then went to the UK Home Office and regularised my immigration status by applying for and obtaining a work permit from company 2 (Visaplus). That visa was short lived as that business was shonky too and went into liquidation. That year, I held my second UK work permit for a grand total of about three months, sponsored by Visaplus.
Visaplus was formed, by two shonky Directors who did not get struck off from First Point. And there I was moving from one company to another, thinking, 'it's ok the next company won't be shonky'. Below is a picture of
Graham Copsey, one of my old bosses at Visaplus in the UK. My distinct memories of him as a boss are of him sitting in his office looking through Russian Bride magazines and portfolios trying to choose himself a partner, shouting at us to put 'numbers on the board'. There is one of the Russians behind him in the photo below, who I believe went on to become his wife. I cannot tell for sure.
Finally, I was working at an Immigration Expo in the UK when I met Ivan Chait from Ashmore Brown and Chait in Australia. Ivan asked me if I wanted a job in Australia. We had a talk and I said that I was moving home. It was only then that I learned about the concept of Registration as a migration agent. I had worked all that time in the UK and had not ever known that there was such a thing as an RMA. I came back to Australia, passed the exam with a score of 96% in 2001, Registered as an agent, and then worked for Ashmore Brown Chait, before setting up my own agency.
That was my journey to where I am now.
Today when I received an email from Alan Collett (copied below) I could not resist telling my story. I know, first hand, why Unregistered Practice MUST BE STOPPED. I have been on both sides of the fence and the other side is extremely ugly.
Here is the email from RMA, Alan Collett today:
Hi Liana.
Please see the attached.
When is the Department going to take steps to require registration of all agents who have dealings with it on behalf of clients, including those who are in business outside Australia?
Does the Department not recognise the harm this nonsense does to Australia's image and ability to attract skilled people and business owners?
Allowing unregistered agents to represent applicants surely also increases the risk to the integrity of the migration program - those with few ethics are allowed to act on behalf of clients, some of whom I am sure will be happy to instruct an agent who supports them in preparing and lodging dubious and questionable documentation, which the underresourced Department then has to administer/weed out.
Feel able to publish on the MA website. I'm going to take this to Senator Cash too.
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