Australian Immigration Daily News

The ABC Mildura-Swan Hill yesterday announced a migrant scam warning.

This time a couple living in Victoria have been taken for a ride.  Ten thousand dollars has been provided by the couple to a 'recruitment agency' masquerading as an agency that can also obtain visas....a company that doesn't exist!  Now the couple risk being deported.

'Green International' were apprently pretending to be migration agents. 

Perhaps if the Office of the MARA spent some of our registration fees on advertising and promoting the use of registered migration agents, how to find them, where to find them, where  the public can find information on the OMARA website etc, it would aid in public education and avoid situations like this.   The Office of the MARA has a responsiblity to protect the consumer.  They should be advertising and promoting our services, especially given we pay them a huge fee every year.

Look at the OMARA annual report 2012-2013 in Appendix 2.  In the report the Office of the MARA states:

Appendix 2: Advertising and market research

The Authority did not undertake any advertising campaigns in 2012–13.

My comments in relation to Appendix 2:

1. Why not?

2. Shame on them

I digress....

Green International' has also been known by another name, 'Auto Recruitment.

"The implication of this is that the persons who have purported to assist (the family) are unregistered and hence are acting illegally," according to a Migration Agents Registration Authority (MARA) spokesman. 

Is this spokesman Stephen Wood?  I can only guess it is.

Why has the Office of the MARA made no public statement like this about Eddy Kang?

'MARA says it's currently investigating these companies and its associates' the article states.  How is this possible when the Office of the MARA cannot investigate unregistered practice? Or can it?  Eddy Kang and Singapore Oil springs to mind again.