Australian Immigration Daily News

Nobody ever tells you how hard it is going to be when you first sign up to do the RMA course.  At first it seems like a very cool and perhaps prestigious way of earning a living.  Not only that but it seems like a living where helping others to achieve their dreams of a new life in a new country will also have an altruistic aspect to it.

Little does anyone know how hard it really is to be a registered migration agent.

Let me tell you a little bit about my suffering as an agent since 2001 so that somehow I might be able to comfort you in your time of grief.   I am not sure how to write this other than to list the various client issues, OMARA complaints and other such things I have been through.

Firstly, I had a client once by the name of Rort (not his real name).  Rort if you are reading this you will be able to identify yourself.  Rort was referred to me by my father who sat on a board of executives with him.  He was originally from South Africa and now in Australia.  He had a daughter who he wanted to remain in Australia, but refused to get her a student visa because he didn't want to pay for it.  Instead he kept flying her in and out of Australia on visitor visas.  I told him to stop doing this as it was not the primary intention for his daughter to come here and study full time on visitor visas.  He didn't listen.  Eventually the DIMA (as it was called then) cancelled the daughter's visa and guess what?  Rort blamed me.  Not only that but he told my father that unless we did a MRT application for his daughter he would be very angry.  He told my father 'I have had people kneecapped for less than this'.  My father passed this message on to me and told me to be very careful.  I considered going to the police.  However as I was in Brisbane at the time and Rort was in Mosman, Sydney, I decided to leave it.  I also didn't want to get dad into any serious social or business trouble.   

Then there was a French client with a tattoo on his neck who wanted to see one of the agents who worked at Visacorp.  He was not available to see the French client as he was on the phone and had not made an appointment.  The French client walked into the agents office, past my desk and dragged him out of his chair and held him up against the wall by his neck.  He wanted to talk about how to stay in Australia and he wanted to talk about it right now.

Then we had a client who wanted to see me because the DIMIA (then called) was taking too long to process his 457 visa.  He had become overly frustrated and would not accept the advice we were giving him over the phone.  He decided to come into the office and demand to see me and if I did not see him to tell him face to face that his visa was being processed, there was nothing we could do, that he would stay in the office until I came out and saw him and told him again.  I had to walk out and tell him (and his friend) who decided to shout at me for the processing timeframes being my fault.  Then they decided to start yelling at me because I am an agent and I am supposed to make everything go faster for the client.  I told them to take a seat and that I would call the police who would be able to come and help them leave my office.

Then there are the clients that simply refuse to pay.  Then they make up complaints when you ask for your final fee from them as if in some way to justify not paying a fee.  Any complaint will do for these types of clients.  Complaints range from 'lack of contact' or 'not responding quickly enough according to their exacting standards' or 'not telling me that I needed to do XYZ' despite them having been told plenty of times.  These clients think that by taking their complaints to the Office of the MARA and dragging the complaints out that I will buckle in and give up as it is just too hard to deal with it all.  The OMARA investigate heavily and come up with nothing each and every time.  Never a suspension.  Never a cancellation.  Just hours of wasted time.

I have had plenty of complaints against me by clients over the years.  Some have ended up with s308 interviews.  One client in particular by the name of Peter, was not in fact a client.  He decided to complain about me because he submitted his own application.  Before he did this he came to see me and I gave him some advice and sent him a fee agreement to proceed with my services.  Did he take up the services?  No.  He went on without me.  He then accused me of being his 'agent' after it was refused.  This dragged through the OMARA for about 12 months and wasted so much of my time.  In the end, Peter was found to be the culprit for his own doomed application.  I was left with two massive files of documents and hours upon hours of wasted time trying to prove my innocence to the OMARA.

For all those clients out there that think being an agent is a walk in the park, think again.  We are dealing with a highly volatile set of variables when choosing to take on a client to prepare, present and submit a visa application to Australia.  Variables such as DIBP personalities, bias of case officers, client personalities, their partner and that personality, anxious and irritable people who want everything done yesterday, demanding employers who generally want to do the bare minimum to achieve a great outcome as soon as possible and the list goes on.  There are PAMs and legislation to consider and then health and character of not only the applicant but their family as well, if the applicant declares their whole family in the first place (long lost kids, a first wife who disappeared and missing brothers and sisters).  Then there are the clients who tell you they have't got a character record.  Their record is returned to you for inclusion on the lodged application and it is 3 pages long full of crimes and prison sentences.  That is what I have dealt with before.  Clients will lie to get into Australia.  They will lie to you.  They will lie to themselves.  They will lie to the DIBP and the skills assessing authorities.  But somehow under our code of conduct it is up to us to determine that they are telling the truth.  What do I say about that chestnut in the code?  'WHATEVER!'  How is that even enforceable?

Last year I was looking after a protection visa application.  Fees all paid.  Wonderful client.  Great claim.  Client was obviously killed or went underground to save his own life.  I think the former.  He was on the run in Afghanistan with his family.  First, contact every single day.  Then one day, no contact.  No contact ever again.  A life cut short.  A future in Australia gone.  A chance for me to help gone.  Sometimes it does hurt.

Or the protection visa I did for a white South African 44 year old intellectually disabled female.  The case officer interviewed her to determine her claim.  The poor woman was so intellectually challenged she didn't fear for her life in South Africa, being on her own as a single white female with the intellectual capacity of a 4 year old child.  This was a sad story which made me cry on more than one occasion.  The client was bashed in-utero whilst her mother was pregnant which cut off the air supply to the baby.  As a result the intellectual problems were created.  I eventually got this client PR here through protection.  There was a lot of pain and suffering as I put together the case and listened to her auntie tell me the stories of rape and violence.  Sitting in the meeting room I was reduced to tears on more than one occasion.  I just wanted to get her PR.  And I did.

My favourite client, and I really mean this, was a guy called Matt (not his real name).  Matt was a British wide boy from Essex.  After submitting many 457s for him and various companies he worked for, he was on the path to a very successful career.  A real wheeler and dealer with his nose in everything.  Then one day he arrives in my office sweating, out of breath and asks me to help him.  He told me that men were waiting for him outside his office dressed in black coats and that he could not go back there as they were going to kill him.  I took him into my board room and locked the front doors to my immigration practice.  he explained that he was frightened for his life and that a couple of deals had gone bad and that these men were after him.  He was very twitchy ahd could not stop moving.  I explained I was going to call the police to get him protection.  I was not sure what to do other than to call the police.  He agreed as he wanted help.  They police arrived.  Approximately half an hour later, Matt was sectioned and taken to a mental hospital, later diagnosed with bipolar and rapid cycling.  He was dosed up to the eyeballs on drugs and was unable to see his son for a while.  Matt is now out, married and has a new young son.  It was anguish watching him being led away that day by the police.

If you have any similar experiences as an agent then please feel free to share them.  I no longer take on clients because I am quite frankly sick of the anguish.  I keep my registration simply out of some sick personal need to 'remain an agent'.  Now it has become like a badge of honour.   These days I prefer spending my time helping other agents. 

Hats off to all RMAs who are able to battle on year after year with intolerable clients and case officers who seem to have developed an art form out of 'blocking' techniques.  Is there some kind of manual in the DIBP called 'How to shut down communication with a RMA and deal directly with a client' with a subheading 'achieving the result you want by removing the agent from the equation'. 

Yes, this is just a rant about the worst type of clients, and yes, there are awesome clients too.  That will be a story for another blog.  

By the way the Migraton Agents Section at DIBP in Canberra are decent human beings and I like them very much.  That's probably because they aren't client facing.

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