Australian Immigration Daily News

Migration Alliance has been asked to distribute this news to it's members:

The Migration Review Tribunal and Refugee Review Tribunal will cease sending statutory letters by registered post from 16 December 2013. From this date, any statutory letter (such as an invitation to attend a hearing, a letter inviting comment on or response to adverse information, or a decision notification letter) that is sent by post will be sent by standard post.

Registered post will continue to be used to return (to addresses in Australia) original, official documents issued by government agencies.

The following email has been sent to the Hon Senator and Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Michaelia Cash MP, this morning.  Thanks to John Findley, a Senior member of Migration Alliance for preparing this piece.  A copy of this can also found on Newsboot.

Migration Alliance has been asked to distribute the following information to the profession:

The offices of the Migration Review Tribunal and the Refugee Review Tribunal (the tribunals) will be closed over the Christmas and New Year period. Offices will close from 5:00pm on Tuesday, 24 December 2013 and will reopen from 8:30am on Thursday, 2 January 2014.

Applications for review or any responses to correspondence or any other matters which have a due date or deadline on one of the days on which the offices are closed, can be lodged or provided on Thursday, 2 January 2014 and no later than that date.

Fax facilities will remain operational during the period. Please note that applications for review can be lodged by fax, however the tribunals cannot currently accept applications lodged by email. Please contact the tribunals prior to 24 December 2013 or on 2 January 2014 for further information.

Media Release: http://www.newsboost.com/newsroom/migration-alliance/migration-alliance-wins-english-language-testing-for-registered-agents-to-be-repealed

Media release 2: http://medianet.com.au/releases/release-details?id=790972

MIGRATION ALLIANCE HAS DONE IT!!!  WOOOHOOO!!!!

The following information has been received by VETASSESS at 6:03pm last night Australian EST.

Dear Agent,

We’d like to inform you about some recent and upcoming changes in the SRGO assessment process.

Firstly, applicants and agents applying for an SRGO assessment can now upload the required documents onto the online portal. This applies to both new and pending applications. Documents no longer need to be certified photocopies, but should be colour scans of original documents. Please note that you can upload initial documents until 30 days after submitting your application. If you are requested to or need to upload more documents at a later stage, please contact us and we will enable the upload feature again.

If an applicant is unable to scan documents effectively, you will still be able to submit hard copies of the certified required documents. If you are unable to apply online, you can also still apply using a paper-based application.

At the moment applications for Chinese Qualification Verification still need to be submitted separately, either online or by post. For information on how to submit the supporting documents for Chinese Qualification Verification, please visit http://www.vetassess.com.au/migrate_to_australia/verify_chinese_documents.cfm.

Secondly, we will be issuing electronic outcome letters very shortly. All outcome letters will then be available to download from the applicant or agent portal as digitally certified pdf documents.

If applicants still wish to receive a hard copy of the outcome letter in addition to the electronic version, they can indicate this in the postage section of the online application form.

We are hoping these new features will further streamline the application process and make the system even more user-friendly for applicants and their agents.

Kind regards,

Marieke Shin

Acting Coordinator SRGO