Australian Immigration Daily News

For those who may have missed my post from late last week about the "United Profession" ticket for the board of our sister organisation, the Migration Institute of Australia, I am re-posting it:

Members of the Migration Alliance are encouraged to nominate for positions to the board of our sister organization, the Migration Institute of Australia on MA’s “United Profession” ticket in the upcoming elections for MIA’s Board of Directors. Nominations for the MIA Board are open until 6 October 2015. 

The form that can be used to nominate for the Board can be found at the following link: 

I received the following email today and the former agent has given me permission to publish:

Dear Liana

I would like to thank Migration Alliance for the support and representation of Registered Migration Agents’ issues. I am sad to advise you that I have resigned as RMA and I didn’t renew my registration due to personal issues.

In the last couple of months, we have seen that some judges of the Federal Circuit Court have differing views concerning how the criteria for the grant of a student visa should be applied.

In late July, Judge Manousardis held, in Khanna & Ors v Minister for Immigration & Anor, (2015) FCCA 1971 (20 July 2015) that having a desire to settle in Australia on a long term basis if an appropriate visa pathway become available is not inconsistent with having a genuine intention to stay in Australia only temporarily (if the applicant is not ultimately successful in obtaining a visa to remain in Australia at the end of the student visa period).

Indeed, in my post about the Khanna case, I commented that Judge Manousardis’s interpretation is consistent with what I believe is a very widely-held perception of the student visa program, namely that there are many tens of thousands (if not more!) people who originally came to Australia as students, and who then decided to stay here to work and live after they were able to gain further visas either of a temporary or permanent kind.  And indeed I would suspect that if most student visa holders were asked about their “subjective intentions”, they would say that they would like to stay in Australia after their studies are completed if there is a viable pathway for them to do so.  Furthermore, the very structure of Australia’s visa system certainly seems to contemplate that people who come here as students may be allowed to remain, with the “Temporary Graduate” visa (subclass 485) being a prime example!

Interestingly the online newspaper 'The Ethics Daily' has picked up Migration Alliance's story about OMARAs random audit emails.  It would appear that if an Online Ethics Paper is running a story on OMARA's 'random audit' emails then there may be a problem.  

Now, with respect to the overall security of the Qualtrics surveys that OMARA uses, it would appear that anyone with access to the nominated email address or who has been forwarded the email by the RMA, could complete the survey for and on behalf of the RMA.  We have tested it and found that there is no mechanism for an RMA to actually “prove” their identity prior to completion of the survey.  A 12 year old child could complete the survey if their parent left the email open and the RMA would be none the wiser.

Just as an RMA needs to log into the OMARA website to complete certain formal processes, so should they have to log into the website and have their ID captured and verified properly before they complete a survey, where the information is gathered and could later 'incriminate' them and lead to S308 and S309 notices. 

I have written to the OMARA on more than one occasion about this glitch, and suggested that a solution to this problem would be that the OMARA ask agents to log in before completing the survey, and that access to the survey can only be obtained after login. 

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