Australian Immigration Daily News

Skilled News Letter – Migration Alliance Summary

Department of Home Affairs released their November edition of Skilled Newsletter.  Topics of interests include Temporary Skills Shortage (TSS) visa, Employer Nomination Scheme, Transfer of Labour Agreements to online platform and more.

Migration Alliance brings you the following summary to help you to prepare your application under the new regime.

1.      Immi Account Outages

Users experienced intermittent outages throughout last week whilst using immi account.  Home Affairs performed several system upgrades between Friday 16th to Saturday 17th November.  It is anticipated the system will resume working and agents as well as applicants can lodge visa applications per the standard process.

2.      Labour Agreements go online!

Users will be able to access Labour Agreement forms using their immi account.  Any paper based labour agreements currently in under assessment will continue to be assessed as per the previous arrangements.  New requests for Labour Agreements will need to be submitted online.  A single form will be available for all types of labour agreements.  However, the form is intuitive therefore further questions relating to specific agreement will be generated depending on the applicant’s responses.  Home Affairs notes that the online form will prevent an applicant from submitting their Labour Agreement unless all the required documents are attached to the application.  The aim of is to reduce the processing times and allow caser officers to quickly make decisions on fully documented applications.

3.      Updates to TSS Sponsorship Forms

New version of TSS forms has been released.  The new version allows company owners to be identified on the form in addition to Directors.  Given that a company can be the owner of another company, before being asked for the details, the applicant is asked to indicate whether the owner, director, principal and / or partner is a person or an organisation.  If you select ‘Organisation’ you will be asked to enter the Company name. The Position / role options available are Company secretary, Director, Owner, Partner and Shareholder.  If you select ‘Person’ you will be asked for their personal details.

4.      Updates to TSS Nomination Forms

A new section has been added to the LMT section of the TSS Nomination form to cater for the alternative evidence provisions relating to select occupations and select positions.  Completing this section will also prompt applicants to attach the required LMT submission when you get to the end of the form.  Department assesses whether international trade obligations apply to a nomination in relation to either LMT or visa period, based on whether the applicant indicates that they are seeking concessions under the provisions of an international trade agreement. Departmental systems run some basic checks to determine whether an ITO may apply based on the answers provided in International trade agreement section on the Application context page of the form.  If these checks do not indicate that an ITO applies to the nomination, a warning message will appear.   These checks do not cover every specific scenario and some subjective assessment may still be required to determine whether an ITO applies or not. However, if you click Confirm and continue to lodge the nomination without providing LMT evidence, and it is subsequently determined that an ITO does not apply, your nomination will be refused.

A reminder, the following alternative LMT Evidence will be considered if:

•             the nominee is a:

• citizen/national of China, Japan or Thailand; or
• citizen/national/permanent resident of Chile, Korea, New Zealand or Singapore.

or

•             the nominee is a current employee of a company that is;

• an associated entity of the sponsor; and
• that associated entity is located in Chile, China, Japan, Korea, New Zealand or any ASEAN nation (Brunei, Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam);

or

•             the nominee is:

• a current employee of an associated entity of the sponsor’s business and that associated entity operates in a WTO member country;
• nominated as an Executive or Senior Manager; and
• will be responsible for the entire or a substantial part of the company's operations in Australia.

or

•             the nominee:

• is nominated as an Executive or Senior Manager;
• is nominated by an overseas business sponsor operating in a WTO member country; and
• will be responsible for the establishment of a new operation of that business in Australia.

or

• the nominee is a citizen of a WTO member country and is being nominated by an employer for whom the nominee has worked in Australia on a continuous, full-time basis for two years immediately before the nomination is lodged.

This means that LMT would not be required for a new nomination lodged by the same sponsor or an associated entity of that sponsor provided:

• the visa applicant/holder will be staying in the same nominated position; and

either

• the new sponsor is still an associated entity of the original sponsor or
• the employer has stayed the same (that is, even if one company has ceased to exist).

LMT might not be required if the person is nominated for a different position with the business but has a specialised knowledge at an advanced level of a proprietary nature of the company's operations.

5.      TSS Visa Forms

The Travel history details and Details of country of residence questions tables on the TSS Visa and Subsequent Entrant application forms have been updated to provide new functionality that allows visa applicants to enter details for multiple applicants (primary and secondary) at the same time, rather than having to enter each trip separately for each applicant.

6.      Employer Nomination/Regional Sponsorship

The ENS / RSMS visa application form has been updated to include more comprehensive English language questions - similar to those on the TSS visa application form. The aim is to ensure there is a level of consistency between TSS and ENS visa programme. Applicants will now be asked to enter specific details of individual test scores and indicate whether the applicant has undertaken any secondary / tertiary education where the instruction was in English.  The Travel history details and Details of country of residence questions tables have also been updated in the same way as those on the TSS visa application form.

7.      Lodgement problems and system outages

Any lodgement problems and system outages should address directly to Home Affairs:

https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/help-support/contact-us/popular-online-services

8.      Broken Links

Home Affairs updated their website which has resulted in many broken links including:

• Technical support
• Immi account
• Information regarding visa types

Users should use the link above to contact Home Affairs if they are unable to find specific page they are looking for.