With an estimated 10,000 overseas 457 visa-holders, the health care and social assistance industry is among the larger sectors employing foreigners in Australia. This has drawn the attention of the Fair Work Ombudsman who recently announced that its inspectors are set to knock on the doors of many of its employers.

Fair Work inspectors will check up to 600 employers over the coming months to ensure their businesses are paying the correct minimum hourly rates, penalty rates, allowances and loadings and providing appropriate meal breaks. Compliance with record-keeping and pay-slip obligations will also be monitored.

Over the past four-and-a-half years, the Agency reported that it has recovered more than $7 million for 5300 underpaid employees from this industry. On average, more than 3000 people a month call the Fair Work Ombudsman Infoline from the health care and social assistance sector.

There are so many real benefits for a person who is present in Australia as a permanent resident to take the next step and seek Australian citizenship. 

One of the benefits – although one would think that it would be needed only by a very tiny percentage of people who are living in Australia – is that having citizenship effectively insulates a person from the possibility of having their visa cancelled on character grounds and being deported back to their country of origin. 

Of course, an Australian citizen could conceivably commit a crime of the worst imaginable description and the consequence would only be a prison sentence.  For the non-citizen who is here on a visa but wishes to remain, there is a “double sanction” – not only will they suffer whatever sanction the criminal justice sees fit to impose, but, after they finish their prison term, they will be ushered into the “delightful accommodations” that are provided in immigration detention and then “sent packing” to wherever it is they may have come from. 

Experienced migration agents may be becoming a rare breed. The OMARA figures indicate that almost half of the advisors in the migration advisory industry have less than 3 years’ experience.

This may not come as a surprise given the strong growth of the migration advisory industry in recent years. Current figures indicate that there is an average net increase of 40 registered migration agents (RMAs) a month. However, not all survive its demands with the OMARA figures showing 157 left the industry in the September quarter alone.

Overall, the total number of registered migration agents increased from 5706 at 30 June 2015 to 5830 at 30 September 2015 according to the OMARA’s Migration Agent Activity Report.

Over two-thirds or 67% of migration advisors are congregated in New South Wales and Victoria. About a third of the total number of RMAs are also lawyers. Currently, legislation requires migration advisors – including lawyers - to be registered with the OMARA in order to practice in the industry. The number of lawyers that could enter the industry could rise significantly, once - as proposed - the OMARA registration requirement is removed for legal practitioners.

Please find a link below to the Migration Alliance Inc submission to the Productivity Commission re Migrant Intake to Australia.

http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/current/migrant-intake/submissions#post-draft

We encourage members to make submissions in their own individual capacity.

Is there any real chance of successfully challenging a Ministerial decision to cancel a visa on character grounds? 

In view of the fact that there has been considerable attention in the media to cancellations involving people who have lived in Australia for long periods of time – for example, the article that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald over the weekend concerning the case of Ricardo Bolvaran, and the many reports about New Zealanders having their Special Category visas cancelled –this seems like a timely and natural question to ask. 

As I have mentioned in previous posts, cases involving visa cancellations on character grounds do seem to have been one of the principal “flavours of the past year”. Many of the cases that have come before the Federal Court have involved attempts to overturn Ministerial decisions to cancel visas.