Australian Immigration Daily News

Compliance in Melbourne are in the grips of a craze concerning Migration Agents and protection visas. Today a colleague was told that if they lodged an application for a protection visa on behalf of their client that they would "tarnish" their reputation as an RMA.

Last week a colleague was the subject of an allegation from a compliance officer to the effect that he had encouraged a client to make false statements in an application for a protection visa. That allegation arose in the course of a conversation where my colleague complained that compliance was intimidating my client during the course of the BVE interview.

Perhaps it was just a bit of tit for tat....OR...perhaps Compliance in Melbourne is in the grips of some craze about lawful permissible applications and the Code of Conduct.

I have just received an extraordinary piece of correspondence from DIBP asserting that an Australian Birth certificate and possession of an Australian passport is not proof of Australian citizenship.

If you click on the link you will see this amazing piece of correspondence.

The-Citizenship-Question.pdf

Is it utterly futile to try to overturn a decision made personally by the Minister to cancel a person’s visa on character grounds? 

If you have been following the discussion of visa cancellation cases on this blog, that may certainly appear to be the case. 

For a short time, it seemed that a small window might be opening through the decisions of Judge Logan of the Federal Court in the Eden and Stretton cases.   In each of those cases, Justice Logan had essentially concluded that the exercise of the visa cancellation power was legally unreasonable when it was “disproportionate”, or, in His Honour’s “pithy phrase”, when the visa cancellation power was used in a way that was analogous to using a sledgehammer to crack a note.

What will the consequences be if a Standard Business Sponsor breaches its sponsorship obligations and exploits its employees?

A decision that was handed down on 8 June 2016 by Justice Buchanan of the Federal Court in the case of Minister for Immigration and Border Protection v Hallmark Computer Pty Ltd (2016) FCA 678 suggests the answer. The case also provides a cautionary tale to sponsors of 457 visa holders and should provide a strong deterrent message:

If you breach your sponsorship obligations, you run the risk of paying very heavy monetary penalties!

Do Registered Migration Agents really add value to the process of preparing a visa application? 

Are they really worth the extra cost? 

Since most visa applications are now made over the Internet, do you really need a migration professional to complete the application for you?