Australian Immigration Daily News

Readers will be aware that our colleague Mark Northam has provided "granular detail" of the changes to the Subclass 186 (Employer Nomination Scheme) and Subclass 187 (Regional Sponsored Migration Scheme) visas that were introduced through the Migration Legislation Amendment (Temporary Skill Shortage and Complementary Reforms) Regulation 2018  that came into force on 18 March 2018. 

The full text of those new regulations can be accessed by clicking on this link.

We are writing to provide a "more general", "broad-brush" summary of the changes to the 186 and 187 programmes, as outlined in the Explanatory Memorandum that accompanied the regulations.

The Government has released the long-awaited regulations to implement the changes to Australia's temporary skilled visa programme that were first announced in April 2017.

The Regulations wee made by Governor General Peter Cosgrove and were made yesterday, 15 March.

The Regulations will come into force on 18 March 2018, and are known as the Migration Legislation Amendment (Temporary Skill Shortage Visa and Complementary Reforms) regulations 2018. The full text of the Regulations can be accessed through this link.

Do you want to read a story that illustrates why it is a poor idea for an applicant to turn the whole process of completing a visa application over to a “consultant”, without checking the contents of the application for accuracy?

Or why it really is “bets practice” for a Registered Migration Agent to have the applicant review all the information that is provided on an Internet visa application before clicking on the “submit” button?

Then look no farther than the recent decision of the Federal Circuit Court in the case of Ashiq v Minister for Immigration & Anor (2017) FCCA 544 (7 March 2018).

On 18 April 2017, the Prime Minister and the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection announced that major changes would be introduced to Australia’s temporary skilled visa programme.

Of course, the most significant of these changes was the proposed abolition of the Subclass 457 visa, and the replacement of that visa with what will be known as the Temporary Skill Shortage (“TSS”) visa.

The changes that were announced in April 2017 are expected to come into force  at some  time  this month,  although the exact date is not certain: it will be whenever the legislation required to implement the changes comes into force.

Heartbreaking. Simply heartbreaking.

There is no other way to describe the story of an applicant who had been “scammed” by an unscrupulous person, and whose ability to remain lawfully in Australia now appears to be completely ruined.

And the true shame of it is that the Australian government doesn’t seem to have taken any action to shut down the scammers (who are not, by the way, Registered Migration Agents).