Australian Immigration Daily News

Migration Alliance has received another report from a migration agent which suggests that the MARA has gone off the deep end yet again!!

Here’s the issue: Can a person provide “immigration assistance”, on a “free” or “pro bono” basis as a “private person” or “individual” without somehow being affiliated with a “business name”, and having a “business address” other than their home address?

You would think that this shouldn’t present the slightest issue in the world and that the answer to this question ought to be obvious as day, right?

How many Registered Migration Agents operate their practices in their own names? A great many, correct? And why should there be any problem with that? If you run your practice in your own name, rather than a “business name”, won’t the client community know exactly who they’re dealing with – namely, you?

Doesn’t that really afford greater consumer protection than dealing with an entity with a business name and an ABN, without knowing who the persons who work for the entity actually are?

And how many agents run their practice in whole or in part from a “home office”? What could possibly be the problem with that? Isn’t that one excellent way of keeping costs down, so that high quality service can be provided to clients at affordable cost?

And if you are providing immigration assistance on a pro bono basis, isn’t “working from home” at least one of the most sensible, if not the most sensible way to do it?

What possible difference could it make to the quality of the advice one gives on a pro bono basis if you are doing so in your own name, and from your own home office?

Here comes the punch line: The MARA apparently does see a problem with this!!!

You read that right!!! Migration Alliance is providing free smelling salts to revive anyone who has fainted from shock and disbelief!

Our colleague reports to us that when he sought to register with the MARA as a non-commercial agent, he was told that it would be unacceptable to register under his personal name and private address, and that he would somehow have to “link” himself to a business name and business address.

Apparently the MARA relied on section 287(2) of the Act for what I would describe as this “preposterous proposition”.

Section 287, which deals with the official register of migration agents, only says at subsection (2) that the Register is to show (at (b)) “any business names of the agent or the agent’s employer”  and at (c), a business address for the agent.

Nowhere, nowhere, nowhere does section 287 require that a RMA have a business name, or that an RMA cannot operate under her or his own name.  Nowhere, nowhere, nowhere does section 287 provide that an RMA must have a business address different from their private home address. 

And nowhere, nowhere, nowhere does the Act say that a private person cannot be registered on a non-commercial basis to provide immigration assistance on a pro bono basis.

Indeed, isn’t in the interest of the community as a whole for there to be persons available who have practiced professionally as RMAs, and who out of the goodness of their hearts, now want to help others by providing migration assistance on a pro bono basis?

Why on earth should such persons need to affiliate themselves with the business name under which they previously practiced, or under the business name of another RMA or organisation?

As both Barrack Obama and Lleyton Hewitt have been heard to say, in different contexts, “Come on!!!”

Or to put it another way: “Get real, and get with the program!!!”

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