Australian Immigration Daily News

Liana Allan, Founder of Migration Alliance, represented the five-thousand plus Migration Alliance membership on Tuesday this week at the Migration Advice Industry - Stakeholder Meeting, followed by dinner with Jason Wood MP. Migration Alliance was the peak professional association for RMAs present at the meeting.

The meeting took place at 5:30PM on Tuesday 27 August 2019 at the Sydney office of Sparke Helmore Lawyers.  The informal dinner was at Baccomatto Osteria in Surry Hills.

Representatives from key groups such as the Law Council, Corporate Sector, RILC, College of Law (Capstone), Australian Government Solicitors, Migration Alliance, and others who flew in from across Australia.

Topics at the Stakeholder meeting were as follows:

1. Eradication of unregistered offshore practice and taking Australia in line with Canada and New Zealand (they do not accept applications from unregistered agents).  Migration Alliance put forward to the Minister that Australia should stop accepting applications from unregistered persons and to follow the example in the Canadian and New Zealand model.

2. Lack of Regulation of Education Agents and the negative impact of their providing a 'visa service' and in effect, blatantly breaking the law every day when using a Form 956A.   Migration Alliance made it clear that Education Agents who give immigration advice can and do ruin people's lives and that something needs to be done about it.  Migration Alliance gave a short oral submission on this topic, and then provided a written submission which had been drafted by RMA, Phil West, PhD, Member of Migration Alliance, along with a redacted sample of a a student visa refusal as a result of incorrect advice from an Education Agent. 

Key points made by Migration Alliance about Education Agents:

a. Education Agents must be regulated and act in the best interests of the client
b. Education Agents must specifically be barred from assisting student clients with GTE or advice about financial capacity for visa applications.
c. Education Agents must be specifically barred from providing ANY advice relating to visas, PR pathways or related. Being an ‘Authorised Recipient’ visa the 956A must must be codified if necessary so it is made clear that this JUST means the agency is a recipient of departmental communication but that this does not provide any legal basis for them to advice about visas, GTE, financial capacity etc.
d. Education Agents must have a Code of Conduct or similar which provides a framework related to retention of documents, acting in the best interests of the client, providing any documents to the student upon request (eg copy of online application, GTE letter etc) and declaring Conflict of Interest/Commissions from the colleges, health insurance and banks.

3. A written submission regarding Form 956.  This was prepared by RMA Berta Mikhael, Member of Migration Alliance.

Key points made:

To completely change the format of the Form 956 into a:

• Online Form – strictly for RMAs/Legal Practitioners that are RMAs
• New Format – only for Advice, Immigration Assistance and Authorisation (Recipient)

Form 956 – Definition of 'Exempt Persons':

The following people do not have to be registered as Migration Agents in order to provide immigration assistance:

• A close family member (spouse, child, adopted child, parent, brother, or sister of a visa applicant) 
• A Sponsor or Nominator for a visa applicant
• A Member of Parliament or their staff
• An official whose duties include providing immigration assistance
• A member of a diplomatic mission, consular post or international organisation.

There is no evidence that the people described above have demonstrated sound knowledge in migration law and procedure, nor that they can assist persons under the Migration Act 1958.  

4. The re-writing of the RMA Code of Conduct.  A draft discussion paper will be available soon.  We will advise agents when the discussion paper becomes available.

5. Increasing the power of the Office of the MARA - no verbal or written representations were made by Migration Alliance, however strong submissions were made by other representatives.

6. Supervised Practice for new agents - various ideas on how this might look were provided by Stakeholders, including the different options for practical education of new agents.

Some of the members from the group then continued on after the end of the Stakeholder meeting, and attended a dinner with Jason Wood MP from 7:30pm onwards in Surry Hills. Liana Allan from Migration Alliance attended the dinner, where informal discussions continued among the group.  

Dialogue between Migration Alliance and the Minister's Office has continued this week.

The Hon Minister Jason Wood MP will be a keynote speaker at the Migration 2019 Conference in Sydney on 15 November 2019.

Liana Allan from Migration Alliance talking to other Stakeholder representatives at the dinner.  Victorian RMA, Holly Byrne, ex committee member of Migration Alliance was also in attendance.