Australian Immigration Daily News

Is there anything that you can do when “Murphy’s Law” strikes, and everything that could possibly go wrong, does go wrong? 

What if a visa applicant is entirely “blameless”, and the applicant’s failure to satisfy a criterion for the grant of a visa is the result of circumstances entirely outside the applicant’s control? 

Do the Federal Courts have a general power to “dispense with the Migration Regulations” in order to prevent a harsh or unjust outcome? 

The Australian Migration Profession will undergo CPD changes from 1 January 2018

The Office of the MARA (OMARA) are changing the CPD framework for registered migration agents from 1 January 2018.  The OMARA have received applications from CPD providers who would like to offer CPD and the Practice Ready Programme from the 1 January 2018.  Those applications have not yet been decided.  No CPD provider has been approved to deliver training in 2018 at this stage.   

All current CPD activities will expire on 31 December 2017.

It is very important that you complete any CPD that you started in 2017 and your CPD points are reported to the OMARA before 31 December 2017. 

There's an interesting article in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald concerning a joint investigation by Fairfax Media and SBS Television into an alleged "pay-for-visa" fraud that allegedly involved visa applicants making payments to a company in return for job placements in regional areas, and the company's allegedly making payments to employers for providing jobs to applicants and sponsoring them.

The article can be found at this link: "Million-dollar visa scam leaves migrants $50,000 out of pocket, boss drives Porsche"

The article indicates that there will be further details about the investigation on SBS tonight (14 November) at 7:30 p.m. (on the "Viceland" program and at 11 p.m.

The migration consulting business is clearly thriving in Australia.  According to the latest Migration Agent Activity Report released by MARA, during the first half of 2017, registered migration agents lodged 54% of Business Skills visa applications, 76% of the total 457 Temporary Work (Skilled) visa applications and 86% of Employer Sponsored visa applications.  

Industry growth & profitability generally leads to increased supply side competition and this has proven true for Migration Agents in Australia as well.  The chart below highlights a staggering 43% growth of registered agents from 4,899 in 2013 to just over 7,000 in 2017. 

In yesterday’s post, I published news about the most consequential change to the Migration Regulations that will be introduced by the Migration Legislation Amendment (2017 Measures No. 4) Regulations 2017, which will affect Public Interest Criterion 4020.

The amendments, which were made by the Governor-General on 2 November 2017, and which will become effective on 18 November 2017, include a number of additional changes to the regulations.

A summary of these changes is provided below: