Australian Immigration Daily News

I have just sent an open letter to MIA members and Ms Chan:

Dear MIA Members and Angela Chan 

I have called Angela Chan twice and both times she was unavailable.  Over a week ago, I wrote to Kevin Lane asking if there might be a way for Migration Alliance and the MIA to work together in the interests of the profession.  I used his email and the generic MIA email to be 100% sure he got it.  No response.  That's ok.  I now choose an open letter to the MIA Board and Members to question some of the information our joint members have received from Ms Chan in an email on Tuesday 10 September at 5:40pm. 

Following a strong email from Christopher Levingston this morning to MIA members asking them "what value are you getting from the MIA?", members of the MIA have started confirming that they will no longer be renewing their memberships with the MIA.   

This follows the sudden recent 'resignation' of Maurene Horder as CEO and conflicting messages from various persons responsible for the MIA.  I have tried to make contact with Maurene Horder via LinkedIn and will continue to try and find a way to contact her to find out what really happened.

Email messages have started streaming in to Migration Alliance today as MIA members become fed up.  Examples (minus the identifiers) are as follows:

The Migration Alliance RMA conference has kicked off in Perth successfully today.  So far, key note speakers have been Bruno Delfante from the WA State Government who is speaking on State Sponsored Migration. 

Bupa are providing massages for Registered Migration Agents today at the conference to keep them all relaxed and happy during the event.  Below is a picture of the Bupa massage team.

Migration Agents are starting to have a serious concerns in relation to Vevo.
 
As Migration Alliance RMAs would know, with visa labels now non-existent, our reliance on Vevo is paramount in determining the current status of a visa holder.
 
An email this morning from an RMA to the Migration Alliance This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. email says,

'I feel that this is not as reliable and cant be trusted to determine the true status of any given visa holder.
 
For example, recently upon checking the visa status of one of my applicants, the Vevo records showed that he was the current holder of a 119 visa and this visa was "in effect" and he was offshore.
However, I knew this to be incorrect due to the applicant did not arrive onshore before his deadline date on his original visa approval.

So I emailed DIAC to request a true status and they confirmed that the applicant is not able to arrive onshore with this visa.

Migration agents are encouraged to take two surveys which we believe will assist us in our efforts to represent you at our DIAC and Office of the MARA meetings:

1. Survey on the Migration Agents Gateway:

The migration agents gateway is supposed to be a gateway just for migration agents.  The issue agents have is that it is not private or locked, but open to the public.  This means it is actually a public gateway.  Agents have been complaining about the length of time it takes to get a response from the gateway, the message that shows on the gateway before agents post a query (opressive and insulting) which asks RMAs to agree to a host of things before asking a question, and the answers from DIAC being incomplete or not answering the question.  In my next quarterly meeting with DIAC I am going to take the results of the survey below and sit down with DIAC and try to create a better solution.