Australian Immigration Daily News

Earlier today, Home Affairs released their final skilled newsletter for 2018 summarising current and upcoming changes to Australia’s skilled visa programme. Migration Alliance brings you a summary of the main changes to watch in coming months.

1.       Legacy Cases 457 cases and TSS Review Rights

Subclass 457 and TSS visas are reviewable by the Administrative Tribunal.  This is assuming that the visa applicant was onshore at the time of application and the approved nomination has not yet ceased.  Alternatively, there must be a sponsorship or nomination currently being reviewed by the AAT.  The AAT has published a very useful FAQ sheet for applicants who had their nominations refused and this document can be found here:

  http://www.aat.gov.au/AAT/media/AAT/Files/MRD%20documents/Factsheets/FS08-Nomination-Refusals.pdf

A Sydney plastics manufacturing company that underpaid two Sri Lankan visa holders has been penalised by the Federal Circuit Court after failing to meet a deadline to back-pay these workers.

Delahill Pty Ltd, which trades as ABCO Plastics at Guildford, has been penalised $15,000 and one of its directors, Guilherme Roque Rebello, $3,000 after legal action by the Fair Work Ombudsman.

Fair Work Inspectors first investigated the company after two employees, a husband and wife, made requests for assistance.

As the saying goes, "it was too good to last" or "too good to be true".

Or as Joni Mitchell sang "they paved Paradise and put up a parking lot".

Just recently, we had posted news of the decision of Justice Greenwood in Brown v Minister for Home Affairs (No. 2) where His Honour held that the 2015 legislation that amalgamated the Migration Review and Refugee Review Tribunals with the pre-existing Administrative Appeals Tribunal had given the AAT power to extend the deadline for the filing of applications for merits review to the Tribunal.

For those of us who are familiar with the subclass 189/489 visa programme, 11^th day of each month marks a significant milestone as invitations are sent to potential applicants, giving an opportunity to lodge an application for a subclass 189/489 visa.

Contrary to popular beliefs, invitations are auto-generated with no manual intervention (a hint lies in the fact that invitations are generally received during odd hours of the night!).  To those who received their invitation earlier this week, a big congratulations and all the best with your visa application.  To those who are yet to receive an invitation, let’s look at what we can do to improve your chances of receiving an invitation on the 11th of January.

When exploring independent skilled migration, I use the method called the “control test”.  This means, looking at your points and categories where these points are placed then subsequently determining whether the category is something that you can or cannot control.  To give you a clearer example, our age is something that we cannot control therefore our points will naturally go up or down depending on where we are placed in the biological timeline.  Once we eliminate the categories that cannot control, we can start focusing on categories which are within our control.

Imagine this scenario....Your client made an application for a 457 before 17 April 2017 and it was refused and you are on appeal at the AAT.

The substantive issue was an assertion by DOHA that the position was not genuine.

However, you are now at the AAT and you are winning on the genuine position issue and then the Tribunal ambushes you by saying words to the effect, '...however, notwithstanding that the subject position is genuine it is subject to a caveat and you do not meet that requirement."