Australian Immigration Daily News

The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Concession Codes and Payment of Fees) Regulations 2019 (the Regulations) will amend the Australian Citizenship Regulation 2016 (the Citizenship Regulation) to allow citizenship application fees, and refunds of citizenship application fees where appropriate, to be paid in foreign currencies and in foreign countries, and to align the concession codes in Schedule 3 with the concession codes currently employed by the Department of Human Services (DHS).

In particular, the Regulations amend the Citizenship Regulation to:

 Incorporate, by reference, instruments made under the Migration Regulations 1994 (the Migration Regulations) that relate to the payment of fees in foreign currencies and in foreign countries.

The following information appears on the TRA website dated 22 Feb 2019:

Commencing on 1 March 2019, applicants for Trades Recognition Australia’s (TRA) TSS Skills Assessment Program (TSS program), Offshore Skills Assessment Program (OSAP) and Trades Recognition Service (TRS) will pay fees for their skills assessment directly to TRA through the TRA Online Portal.

Before a payment can be made, applicants must select a TRA approved registered training organisation (TRA approved RTO) to conduct their skills assessment from RTO Finder.

ABF Field Operations officers in Victoria, New South Wales & Queensland continue to see results through Operation Battenrun

In one particularly concerning case, a 16-year-old boy, found living on a mattress in a garage, was located as a result of four search warrants executed under s251 of the Migration Act 1958 on residences in the regional Victorian town of Robinvale last Wednesday (13 February 2018).

He was among five people found to be sleeping on mattresses in the garage of a residential property which had up to 12 more people living inside the house.

ABF Commander of Field Operations, James Copeman, said the exploitation of foreign workers was never acceptable, but this case involving the 16-year-old was particularly disturbing and the ABF had taken every step to ensure his safety.

Source: Foreign-worker-exploitation.pdf

One of the key recommendations from the Enquiry into the Migration Agent Profession is that all new migration agents be required to complete a period of supervised practice.

Education Agents and Registered Migration Agents grouped together

The committee acknowledge in their report that the majority of agents [migration agents] are professional and provide an outstanding service but evidence of misconduct and fraudulent action by registered migration agents and education agents was apparent and the impact on their victims was significant.  

If you have been spending sleepless nights pondering the meaning of the expression in PIC 4020 "false or misleading in a material particular", then you will welcome knowing about a very recent (yesterday!) decision from the Full Court of the Federal Court.

The case is Singh v Minister for Immigration and border Protection (2019) FCAFC 22.

The decision confirmed the interpretation of the phrase that dates back to an earlier Full Court decision in Minister for Immigration, Local Government and Ethnic Affairs v Dela Cruz (1992) FCA 71; (1992) 34 FCR 348.