Australian Immigration Daily News

It has come to the attention of Migration Alliance that the Migration Institute of Australia has issued a “MIA Notice” – No. 86: 17 November 2017 concerning a new Legislative Instrument concerning the “Arrangements for Partner and Prospective Marriage Visa Applications” – IMMI 17/101, dated 16 November 2017 – that has the potential to cause panic, distress, alarm and uproar among Registered Migration Agents and their clients!! 

See the MIA notice below.

And so far, despite our best efforts, we have not been able to confirm at all what the MIA has said.

So it is at least possible that the MIA Notice may be causing completely unnecessary worry and concern.

Here’s the story:

The new Legislative Instrument that was made by the Minister essentially provides that after 18 November, all categories of partner visa applications must be made as internet applications, through ImmiAccount. The Instrument contemplates that there may be exceptions in circumstances where the applicant is “authorized to use form 47SP, in accordance with directions from the Department”.

However, the MIA Notice goes much further than this, and says as follows:

“The following policy will be applied to applications lodged before and after 18 November 2017 and not finally decided:

*Undocumented or poorly documented applications lodged by RMAs, eg applications that only meet the basic Schedule 1 requirements for lodging a valid application, may be refused without notice and without requests for further information.

* Where natural justice letters have been sent to RMA, no follow up or subsequent reminders will be sent. The Department will decide the application on the information before it, unless an extension of time has been requested and granted.

* For applications lodged prior to 18 November 2017, the Department will provide only ONE opportunity to submit additional information and/or documents or respond to a natural justice letter.”

The Notice form the MIA can be found at this link.

After this Notice was brought to our attention (thanks to William Levingston of Christopher Levingston and Associates) we made urgent efforts to attempt to confirm the accuracy of the contents of the MIA Notice, by reviewing the Legislative Instrument, Department policy (PAM3) and the Department’s Website.

At this stage we have not been able to find anything in these sources which would confirm that what is said in the MIA Notice, which suggests that the Department will be implementing a policy which will result in the “summary” rejection of partner visa applications that are considered to be “poorly supported”, and that the Department will be curtailing opportunities to provide evidence and submissions in reply to “natural justice” letters from the Department.

As far as we can tell, there doesn’t seem to be any basis to what the MIA has said in its Notice.

If anyone reading this can bring tour attention any material which would confirm what the MIA has said about these purported policy approaches by the Department concerning partner visa applications, we would be grateful.

The MIA's notice No. 86.