Australian Immigration Daily News

Life is full of surprises! 

As well as unexpected twists and turns! 

And surprising outcomes! 

Imagine for a moment that you are acting for parties to an application for a prospective marriage visa. 

Imagine also that notwithstanding the submission of various documentary evidence in support of the application, such as photographs, statutory declarations and a letter of support from a marriage celebrant, the Department's reviewing officer is not satisfied that the sponsor and the applicant genuinely intend to live together as spouses, and therefore proceeds to refuse the prospective marriage visa application. 

Imagine further that an application for merits review is taken to the Tribunal, and the Tribunal also arrives at a finding that the sponsor and the applicant do not have a genuine intention to live together as spouses. In reaching this conclusion, the Tribunal refers to a) inconsistencies in the evidence concerning whether the sponsor has sent money to the applicant to assist him with his living costs; b) evidence that at an interview in relation to a previous prospective marriage visa application, the applicant was unable to give accurate details about the ages of the sponsor's children or about her life in Australia; c) inconsistencies in the evidence concerning whether the visa applicant had met the applicant's friends; d) inconsistencies in the evidence concerning where the applicant had stayed during her visits to the country where the applicant lived. 

It seems Registered Migration Agents are keen to learn all about Labour Agreements in the new TSS landscape.  

Alan Chanesman, industry expert at Labour Agreements, is hosting a full class of migration agents in Brisbane today.

Alan remains today without question the migration industry’s most accomplished and knowledgeable Labour Agreement and Work Agreement industry expert in this specialist field. An insightful and entertaining presenter, Alan delivers high-level training to registered migration agents, lawyers and barristers, the only person approved by OMARA to present migration law CPD seminars on 'Labour Agreements'. Alan is often engaged by lawyers and RMA’s as an external subject expert and consultant. 

The changes to Australia's temporary skilled visa programs that were introduced on 18 March 2018 are obviously of great interest and concern to applicants and to the Registered Migration Agents who act for them, not to mention persons who are in Australia under the recently "abolished" 457 visa program.

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection is continuing to release news and updates relating to the introduction of the Temporary Skill Shortage visa, and we will be passing along that information on this site as quickly as we can.

The Department issued an "E-Newsletter" about the changes this morning, which can be accessed at this link.

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.