Australian Immigration Daily News

Dear Members of Migration Alliance,

An AGM has been called for 17 July 2015 at 2pm.

In the intervening period Elections will be held for the positions of:

Dear Migration Alliance members,

Hope you are well. 

Official Invitation to support the Council of International Students Australia (CISA) National Conference 2015

Did you know that your clients could be losing up to 5% of the value of their money when making an international money transfer to Australia?

For a client transferring £100,000 from the UK it can equate up to £5,000 (A$10,000) of their savings being lost in poor conversions rates offered from their bank.

An alternative solution to avoid such losses is to use a regulated foreign exchange company.

The Aid Industry and Humanitarian Organisations need to be mindful that the rest of the world does drift into "misery overload". There probably is an unprecedented number of catastrophes impacting populations that result in forced or necessary movements. This then results in increased "humanitarian need"  etc around the globe. In the past few years somme of the better know hotspots are: Syria, Ebola, Eritrea, South Sudan, Central African Republic, Vanuatu, Nepal and the list goes on.

Human Trafficking IS part of the problem as this also encourages ambit migration which then adds to the problems of forced migration. Human Trafficking feeds off ease of entry into desirable destinations. Human Trafficking is now the third biggest money spinning industry in the world.

Humanitarian agencies frequently talk about "compassion" as a general idea without providing any real ideas as to how the limited resources associated with "compassion" may be best used. In my opinion, AID associated with humanitarian catastrophe is best apportioned quite specifically at immediate need e.g. in camps, for NGOs to better alleviate immediate suffering as best as possible. This is probably as good as it gets. The host countries of Pakistan, Jordan, Chad etc DO receive assistance with such. It becomes a global issue to pressure nation states that create unnecessary movements of people to act in such a way that their populations don't deed to leave. This is MUCH easier said than done. To intervene or to not intervene seems to backfire irrespective of whatever the decision. Fragile balances may exist in areas of teetering dysfunction. 

As per the below announcement from Austrade, we now have confirmation of the new SIV investment regime effective 1 July, 2015. On initial review of the draft options and final frameworks documents (attached) the main differences are: 

-          the Venture Capital  has been reduced to $500k although may rise to $1M within 2 years. Have addressed the “uncalled capital” question by having the remainder of the committed funds held in escrow in a Cash Management Trust or Australian bank account as security for a bank guarantee in favour of the Venture Capital fund

-          Emerging companies still $1.5M although allowing up to 10% in foreign companies i.e. New Zealand (this may mean we have additional group product that meets the requirements)