DAY 1 of a MULTI DAY SERIES

Two Fridays ago I was privileged to run LTA’s first “Reliable and Profitable Marketing for Migration Agents” seminar in Sydney. It was a fascinating training session. We explored what marketing means as opposed to advertising, creating your own marketing plan, defining your marketing niche and succeeding with joint ventures and 3 key areas of business growth:

Suppose a visa applicant submits a “bogus document” to the Department in support of her/his application: is the application “dead on arrival” due to the application of Public Interest Criterion 4020? 

What if the Administrative Appeals Tribunal determines that PIC 4020 should not be “waived”?  Is your client’s application “toast”? 

A case that came out of the Federal Circuit Court yesterday, 6 October 2015,Sharma v Minister for Immigration & Border Protection & Anor, (2015) FCCA tells us: “No, not necessarily. If the AAT did not engage in an “active intellectual process” in considering the applicant’s evidence, then it may very well be found to have committed jurisdictional error.  (Of course, the least that an applicant has a right to expect is that the AAT will engage in an “active intellectual process” and indeed, jurisdictional error may be found to exist not just in cases arising under PIC 4020, but with respect to any case where the AAT fails to engage in a proper assessment of the evidence). 

Last night at 7:30pm the Liberal Party of NSW Division's Acting State Director announced the Women's Council election results for 2015 . 

The Convenor and Founder of Migration Alliance, Liana Allan, has been elected to the Committee.

It doesn't matter whether you are a Greens, Labor, Communist, Marxist or One Nation Party supporter, one has to agree that Liana Allan involved in Women's Council for the NSW Liberal Party is a good thing!

With greater spending power than tourists from New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the rapidly increasing number of Chinese tourist is expected to boost Australia’s tourism revenue further in the coming years. However, the sector’s overall growth may be thwarted by the severe skills shortage facing the hospitality industry.

A record 953,200 Chinese tourists visited Australian shores in the year to August, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, nudging close to New Zealand’s 1.29 million. Coupled with the 212,400 travellers from Hong Kong, CommSec economist Savanth Sebastian predicts New Zealand may be bumped from the top spot in mid-2016.

He told The Australian that Chinese holiday makers are more economically valuable than their New Zealand counterparts because of their spending habits.

“I think the spending power of Chinese and Hong Kong tourists far exceeds what we see out of New Zealand,” he says.

“We’ve seen ongoing strength in incomes in China, a shift from a low income economy to a middle income economy and that’s probably the key driver, coupled with the fall in currency of the Australian dollar.”

According to the report, one of Australia’s busiest airports, Sydney Airport, saw a six per cent rise in international traffic in August, with travellers from China up 14.1 per cent and Hong Kong 10.2 per cent.

In response to a large number of enquiries from RMAs about whether to complete the OMARA's 'Self-Audit' survey, my answer is a firm 'NO'.  Do not complete the survey.

In their response to the enquiry from the Convenor of Migration Alliance, Liana Allan, concerning the OMARA 'Self-Audit' survey, the OMARA has said that it is 'greatly encouraged by the professionalism and integrity of those agents that have participated so far'.

This reply mirrors the emails sent out to those agents who have not completed the survey and clearly seeks to imply that in failing to complete the survey, the relevant agent is neither professional nor a person of integrity.

Clearly this is an attempt by the OMARA to intimidate members of the profession by persistently importuning them to do something which has no legal basis.

For the sake of clarity there is no doubt that the OMARA is charged generally with 'monitoring'.  That is not to say that there is a power to monitor. 

The OMARA asserts that the 'authority' is said to lie in section 316.  This is not the case.  Section 316 (1) deals with the functions, not the 'authority'.   The power to require a person to answer questions or provide documents lies elsewhere in the Act.

To assert otherwise and to assert some 'Authority' to ask migration agents to answer questions, by resort to Section 316, constitutes, at best, function creep by the OMARA.