Australian Immigration Daily News

The Government is ensuring Australia remains an attractive destination for tourists, and temporary visa holders who often fill critical skills shortages, by offering refunds or waivers of Visa Application Charges (VAC). Tourists, working holiday makers, seasonal and pacific workers, prospective partners and temporary skilled workers whose travel has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic will be eligible.

Source: Supporting-Tourism-and-Ag-through-visa-application-charge-changes.pdf

A decision to travel to Australia to study necessarily involves a range of strategic and tactical decisions being taken by applicants for a visa to achieve a variety of outcomes. According to DHA, SkillSelect is a major change to how Australia manages its skilled migration program. SkillSelect helps to ensure the skilled migration program is based on the economic needs of Australia.

It supports the Australian Government in managing who can apply for skilled migration, when they can apply and in what numbers. There is however a catch, whilst we know that Skill Select exists and that the applicant needs to be invited in order to lodge a particular visa, we do not know our ranking amongst cohorts.

For example, if you are a Developer Programmer sitting on 100 points waiting for a subclass 189 invitation, you cannot predict when you will receive an invitation for your visa.  However, by visiting skill select dashboard database, it is possible to filter how many other Developer Programmers are in the queue.  For example, the Dashboard will tell you the lowest score this occupation had received an invitation and how many invitations have been for that particular occupation (you can choose filters such as date range, points range, points breakdown etc). Lets suppose that ten invitation were issued for this occupation last month the minimum score of 95 points.  This would be a good indication that the chance of receiving an invitation in the next round is high.

Last Friday, 9^th October 2020 Migration Alliance in partnership with Legal Training Australia held the very first of its kind, an all-online National Migration Conference.

COVID-19 had a devastating impact on the Australian Migration Profession, seeing a number of practitioners forced out of business, or having to re-invent the wheel in the way they operate their businesses.

Support is the most vital element of surviving through the tough times and reassurance and hope is what keeps practitioners waking up every morning and doing what we as practitioners do best.

The purpose of the instrument is to:
a. repeal the previous instrument, IMMI 14/027; and
b. provide that the registration status charge imposed under section 10 of the MARAC Act becomes due and payable on the earlier time of either:
i. the registered migration agent notifying the Migration Agents Registration Authority that the agent has begun to give immigration assistance otherwise than on a non-commercial basis; or
ii. the day after 14 days of the agent giving immigration assistance otherwise than on a non-commercial basis; and
c. make formatting changes and to improve readability for users of the instrument.

Source: LIN20225.pdf and LIN20225-Explanatory-Statement.pdf

The following is from the Prime Minister’s Multicultural media briefing this morning. For a recording of the briefing, please see link below (download). 

Recording:

Multicultural Press Conference Recording  - Prime Minister (download)