Australian Immigration Daily News

Details of the new pathway to Australian permanent residency for New Zealand citizens, which was originally announced by the Australian Government on 19 February 2016, are now available!

Amendments to Schedule 2 of the Migration Regulations 1994 and a new legislative instrument (IMMI 17/035) came into force on 1 July 2017 in order to introduce this pathway.

Here is the story:

Some welcomed news for working holiday travellers wishing to visit Australia to work and holiday. Applicants must be no more than 35 years of age at the time of application.

A Subclass 417 Working holiday visa is a temporary visa for young people who want to holiday and work in Australia for up to a year. It is a temporary visa that encourages cultural exchange and closer ties between Australia and eligible countries.  Once in Australia, an individual is able to apply for a second working holiday visa assuming they meet the requirement of having completed work in regional area.

Currently the following list of countries are eligible for subclass 417 working holiday visa:

Summary of changes

The legislative instrument still contains two occupation lists:

• the Medium and Long-term Strategic Skills List (MLTSSL)

• the Short-term Skilled Occupation List (STSOL)

• 12 occupations have been completely removed from the lists

• a number of occupations have been added to the lists for certain visa programmes;

• some additional occupations have moved between the STSOL to the MLTSSL;

• the caveats on some occupations have been revised;  

• caveats on occupations now apply to both the Temporary Work (Skilled) visa (subclass 457) and the Employer Nominated Scheme (subclass 186) – Direct Entry Stream.

Removed Occupations:

Professional Indemnity (PI) insurance is no doubt one of the most vital forms of cover for Migration Agents. If things don’t quite go to plan it can provide much needed financial assistance for legal and compensation costs in the event of action taken against you in the course of your business.   

Like all insurance policies however, there are several important conditions and obligations under PI policies that Migration Agents need to be aware of to ensure your policy provides the cover you’re expecting, so that you won’t be left high and dry when you come face-to-face with the unexpected.

PI insurance contracts are issued on a ‘claims made and notified’ basis, which means the policy responds to claims first made against the insured during the policy period, and notified to the insurer during the policy period. In short, for a claim to be covered your policy must have been in place at the time the allegation was made against you, and when the claim is lodged.

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal released their Migration Caseload Summary for July-May by visa subclass.

For this period there were approximately 16 700 lodgements for an appeal.  The overwhelming bulk of applications are to appeal student visa refusals with approximately 3,800 lodgements.  Second in line are partner visas with approximately 3700 lodgements for appeal followed by sponsorship/nomination refusals sitting at 1750.

There were approximately 4622 appeals lodged for refugee visas with Malaysian nationals making up almost 50% of the caseload.