Australian Immigration Daily News

Recently the Office of the MARA sent out tax invoices / receipts to agents and CPD provdiers via email.

Quite a few agents thought these emails were phishing or fake emails.  I have written to the OMARA and they have confirmed that the emails are genuine:

Thank you for your email regarding recent emails from the Authority.

The announcement by the Hon. Senator Michaelia Cash that there will be an independent review of the OMARA is timely given the five year gestation period on the campaign being run by Migration Alliance through the persistent lobbying efforts of Liana Allan.

It is great to have a government in place that is actually interested in engaging with members of the public, this profession and which hears and responds to stakeholder concerns.  My experience of the former government was that they weren't interested, and any suggestions were sent to DIBP to be smothered at birth.

As far as I'm concerned, the timing could not be better as I laboured my way through the simplified online registration process on the OMARA web-portal.

Migration Alliance is in receipt of the following information.  We are pleased about this review.

Migration agents’ regulator to be reviewed

The Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (OMARA) as an industry regulator will be the subject of an independent review, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Senator the Hon. Michaelia Cash said today.

Migration Alliance is pleased to advise that the CEO of the Office of the MARA (OMARA), Mr Steve Ingram has accepted an invite from the SIV Conference organisers, Basis Point, to attend the annual SIV annual conference on 3 July 2014 at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney.

Migration Alliance views the attendance of Mr Ingram as a positive step towards OMARA's engagement with the profession.  The SIV conference is an important event occurring within the Australian migration landscape. 

The SIV conference is set to be a significant Australian immigration event in 2014.  With approximately 400 high-level delegates from a wide cross-section of government, corporate and small to medium enterprise, all of which overlap in the investment space, it is an event not to be missed on the Australian RMA calendar this year.

I received the following response from the DIBP today:

UNCLASSIFIED