Australian Immigration Daily News

Migration Alliance has been in contact with the Department of Home Affairs and awaits advice regarding the status of persons on temporary sponsored visas, or student visas and what will happen in circumstances where they lose their employment.

We understand this is being discussed at the moment, and the government is trying to find workable solutions.

We will post any advice on this topic here on this blog and via email to our members.

In my capacity as Founder of Migration Alliance, in collaboration with Ken Phillips, Executive Director of Self Employed Australia (SEA), we provide the following summary to our RMA members:

This summary aims to assist Migration Alliance members and supporters understand the key Coronavirus emergency assistance available through the Federal government, and more.  SEA have collated this from official government sources and checked with our government contacts.

The assistance support is available for self-employed, small business migration agents who:

• Are sole traders and don’t employ anyone
• Employ people

And covers (details and links below):

The leader in Registered Migration Agent CPD training takes the profession wholly online for March, April, and June 2020.

Legal Training Australia (LTA) is well positioned to take the profession online during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic.

All face-to-face classes have been moved to online classes until at least the end of June 2020.

The Australian Government has today announced a broad new policy approach to the acquisition and delivery of workflow processing capability in the Home Affairs portfolio and other areas across government.

The Government will implement modern, easy to access, digital services for clients in line with its response to the Thodey Review of the Australian Public Service. This approach seeks integrated enterprise ]scale workflow processing capability that could be utilised across the Commonwealth. Key to this is recognising the efficiencies that can be generated from large-scale government investment in technology and the re-use of capability across government.

The Department of Home Affairs will conduct a market consultation process in the coming months seeking industry engagement and insights into the best way to deliver large-scale workflow processing capability for visa and citizenship applications and additionally, for Customs functions and personnel security clearances in the Home Affairs portfolio.

The Chief Medical Officer provided the latest advice on the spread of COVID-19 globally and nationally. Leaders noted that Australia has one of the most comprehensive testing regimes in the world with over 100,000 Australian tests for COVID-19 having been undertaken. While the majority of COVID-19 cases in Australia continue to be from Australians returning from overseas, there have been a number of local outbreaks.

Every Australian has a part to play in slowing the spread of coronavirus.

All leaders reiterated the importance of Australians strictly adhering to social distancing and self isolation requirements, in particular for those who are unwell and for returned travellers. Not adhering to self isolation requirements when you are unwell puts the lives of your fellow Australians at risk.

National Cabinet agreed to risk mitigation measures for non-essential indoor gatherings of fewer than 100 people including the following:

•In a given occupied space, there must be a density of no more than one person per four square metres of floor space. The 4 square metre arrangements for venues will come into effect from 20 March 2020 and will be mandated through state and territory regulatory arrangements. o For example, there can be 25 people in a 100 square metre room, who should maintain a physical healthy distance between each other of 1.5 metres.