While Prime Minister Tony Abbot’s much trumpeted ‘security statement’ has stressed on plans to impose tougher citizenship laws, it provided little by way of detail. The head of the immigration department, Michael Pezzullo however told a senate committee yesterday that his department is restructuring its visa decision making process to ‘empower our officers to say no more often, where circumstances warrant”.

What remains puzzling, in all this is the continued failure of policy-makers to flag that unregistered migration practice needs to at least be looked at in this paradigm shift in Australian migration policy.

Warning of a ‘new dark age’ the Prime Minister indicated that the increasing threat from home-grown extremists required major changes to both security and immigration policies. While much of his speech focussed on why the measures were needed, he did not provide specific details of what they would be, save as to the appointment of a national counterterrorism coordinator and a ban on vilification and hate speech.

The immigration department’s chief, Michael Pezzullo however did not mince his words when he told a senate committee yesterday that his department needs to re-examine how it makes visa grant decisions, to make sure that his officers are making the right decisions which balance the need to welcome legitimate travellers with a need to protect the Australian community.

“I would like to make it abundantly clear to the committee that we want to empower our staff to make better informed decisions on visa and citizenship applications.

“We will empower our officers to say no more often, where circumstances warrant and within the law, through better use of information, intelligence and data analytics, as well as ensuring that our staff have the training and support to make defensible, adverse decisions,” said Mr Pezzullo.

This together with the ‘no benefit of the doubt’ rhetoric of the Prime Minister, must mean that visa applicants are set to face greater scrutiny with greater risk profiling on the agenda for applicants from certain parts of the world.

Employers hiring foreign workers will need to pay more attention to compliance obligations to avoid fines and/or losing their sponsorship rights. The Fair Work Ombudsman told the ABC that there has been ‘a spike’ in the underpayment of foreign workers in recent years.

Recovering $23 million last year from employers underpaying workers is only the tip of the iceberg, according to a report on the ABC. Thousands of workers, including Australians, are being underpaid wages or denied entitlements by their Australian employers, the ABC claims, with a rising number of complaints coming from overseas workers being denied their entitlements.

Cafes, restaurants and pubs, followed closely by construction, the retail trade and service industries including contract cleaning are listed among the main jobs where underpayment is rife. But it was the spike in complaints from overseas workers - including 457 visa holders - that prompted Fair Work Ombudsman Ms Natalie James to launch an investigation.

"One in 10 of our complaints are now coming from visa holders. That's significant and that is a trend that's on the up," she told the ABC.

In 2012, her office recouped $67,000 in underpaid entitlements for 77 visa holders. That skyrocketed the next year to $262,000. Last year $345,000 was recouped for 309 foreign workers. About 50 cases a year end up in court with the rest being resolved by the office of the Fair Work Ombudsman.

Migration Alliance has been provided with the following witness statement by Hanhong Chen (aka Ashley) and given permission to release the information and police statement in an effort to encourage others to seek justice:

Full statement to Surry Hills Police: 20150220095356313.pdf

"I came to know the Abel Prasad man since early March 2014, and this man came to the 375 Crown St Newsagency to approach me and claim that  he can do various visas with 100% successful rate such as subclass 572/573/574/457/186/187/188 visas at low cost, and he claimed to own a law firm named SYD VENTURE CAPITAL PTY LTD. Later I visited his office and came into knowledge of his associate staffs such as XXXXXXX and YYYYYY [real names removed for privacy reasons].

Migration Alliance covered the story of Eddy Kang despite letters and threats from Eddy Kang's numerous lawyers.   With over 85,000 hits on our original news story regarding Eddy Kang it was obvious something was wrong.  Our original story was called 'Clients receive death threats, no job, no visa and no refund' on 16 October 2013.  Here's the story in 'The Australian' today:

AUTHORITIES have swooped on a man who ­allegedly targeted international students with false promises of a subclass-457 work visa in ­exchange for up to $45,000.

South Korean-born Eddie Kang, 51, a director of 20 registered companies, allegedly ­lodged visa applications under var­i­ous business names knowing they were likely to be rejected.

Concerns have emerged about a ‘security statement’ Australian PM Tony Abbot is expected to release next week, according to a report on the SBS. Queensland MP Teresa Gambaro has indicated that changes are brewing that could have significant impact on the Coalition government’s support for the immigration program and multiculturalism.

The former Assistant Minister for Immigration in the Howard government, MS Gambaro said in a statement to SBS that "while it seems clear that there have been very concerning failures of process and a lack of proper diligence with security checks, we should not let these failures of process lead us to question the strengths and benefits of our migration program or our success as a multicultural society.”

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has raised the Lindt Café as an example of where lax enforcement of bail rules allowed Man Haron Monis free on bail while facing serious charges.  

Mr Abbott has detailed the areas he wanted to examine in the context of the security statement.  

"It's clear to me, that for too long, we have given those who might be a threat to our country the benefit of the doubt,” he said in a recent statement. “There’s been the benefit of the doubt at our borders, the benefit of the doubt for residency, the benefit of the doubt for citizenship and the benefit of the doubt at Centrelink...And in the courts, there has been bail, when clearly there should have been jail.”

SBS survey of some some sectors of Australia's ethnic communities leadership indicates that they were concerned that the approach could undermine support for multiculturalism in Australia while Civil Liberties groups have raised their concerns about the Government’s plan to end the so called ‘benefit of the doubt’.