Australian Immigration Daily News

Further to our recent published article in relation occupations flagged for removal (see https://migrationalliance.com.au/immigration-daily-news/entry/2018-05-skilled-occupation-list-changes-some-flagged-for-removal-on-1-july-2018.html) all States and Territories are currently in the midst of updating the State Occupation Lists.

Migration Alliance brings you a state by state summary:

New South Wales                  

Recent posts on the Migration Alliance blog have brought our attention to the new (Department of Home Affairs) DHA phone number.

The Home Affairs website states that they have a new global call centre, that's apparently managed by Datacom so you wont be able to get position numbers from staff (Datacom is currently unverified at this stage but information has been supplied to MA).

You can apparently call from anywhere in the world 9am -5pm (local time in the country you're calling from) on +61 2 6196 0196.

Since the publication of the blog concerning the Law Council of Australia submission to the JSCM, the Founder of Migration Alliance, Liana Allan received an email from and also spoke to David Prince, the Chair of the LCA's Migration Law Committee.  The email and phone conversations between them took place yesterday.  David Prince told Ms Allan that the Law Council submission has a drafting error in it.

That error was said to apparently lie in the Law Council of Australia's submission which suggested that RMAs not be permitted to act for clients at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). 

What was apparently intended was a recommendation to the effect that RMAs not be permitted to appear in adversarial proceedings at the AAT.  Accordingly the Law Council submission is being amended to continue to permit Registered Migration Agents (RMAs) to appear in the Migration Review division of the AAT.  

Migration (IMMI 18/015

Commenced  6 June 2018 

This instrument repeals the prior IMMI 16/019 and specifies the required levels of English language proficiency applicants must have to meet the criteria for the Subclass 500 (Student) visa. 
This item commenced on 6/06/2018

The TOEFL® program provides a paper testing alternative to the TOEFL iBT® test in areas of the world where internet access is unreliable. A very small number of candidates—less than 3%—take the paper version of the TOEFL test.

In 2017, the TOEFL Paper-based Test (PBT) was replaced with a new paper test called the revised TOEFL Paper-delivered Test, which was first administered on 14 October 2017. The new test has three sections – reading, listening and writing – with the same types of questions as the TOEFL iBT test, and the same score scale of 0-30 for each section.

TOEFL PBT scores remain a valid option for student visa applicants until 2 years from the test date. The last valid scores will expire in 2019.