Women from Hong Kong and Thailand are being lured to Sydney brothels on student visas and forced to sell drugs and sex, reports The Sun-Herald. Perhaps the most damning claim in the report is that despite detailed evidence having been lodged with the DIBP more than a year ago, “nothing has been done to close the visa loophole on which the scam thrives”

The reckless exploitation of some Asian women has been uncovered by a recent Sun-Herald investigation. The paper reports that after arriving in Sydney on travel visas, dozens of women from Hong Kong and Thailand are being met by brothel managers who lodge study visa applications on their behalf. In some Sydney parlours, women are said to be forced to work up to 20 hours a day.

“During that time, the women are at the mercy of traffickers who restrict their freedom and force them to work around the clock as prostitutes. While some are aware they are arriving to work in the sex industry, many are oblivious to the fact. Sources on the periphery of the sex ring have testified that within months, an increasing number of workers are finding themselves broken, battered and hooked on crystal meth (ice), which, in some parlours, they are obliged to offer to clients,” the report states.

Commander of the NSW Police Sex Crimes squad, Detective Superintendent John Kerlatec, said: ''These are serious crimes and we work closely with our federal counterparts to ensure we tackle them not only in Australia, but offshore. The difficulty is in trying to get victimised witnesses to come forward.''

According to the report, a consultancy firm, Brothel Busters provided a paper trail to DIBP that demonstrated exactly how sex traffickers were utilising the student visa system. What was of particular concern was that most of these women 'can't speak a word of English' and yet could lodge student visa applications and stay through to the finalisation of the appeals process which could take 2 years.

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The Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (OMARA) describes itself as a discrete, and some would debate 'dysfunctional', office inside the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, that rationalises its self-existence, by launching ‘informal’ lines of inquiry and investigations against Registered Migration Agents.

Fact:  There is no prescribed format that compels a Registered Migration Agent to engage ‘informally’, with the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (OMARA), in response to a ‘informal’ request for information.

To achieve its investigative purpose the OMARA requires a flow of information to establish the framework of its investigation and with the power of compulsion, attempts to lure agents into a false sense of belief, that it wants to ‘informally’ make enquiries of the agent and quickly resolve the issue at hand.

Scott Morrison’s announced that taxpayer funded immigration advice for IMA’s would be cut as of today.

I’ve attached a copy of the Dept’s media statement, and here’s a link to the article at news.com.au:

http://www.news.com.au/national/asylum-seeker-handouts-scrapped-australian-taxpayers-to-save-25-million-a-year/story-fncynjr2-1226869251116

Access to higher education in Australia has been made easier for overseas students from ‘high-risk’ countries like India, Pakistan and China with the removal of stringent grant criteria for students enrolled in selected education institutions.

Confident that it has broken the nexus between education visas and permanent visas, the coalition has relaxed the rules for the grant of student visas to ‘high-risk’ countries.

A total of 60 education providers are now on the list for fast-tracked and low-doc student visas. In essence, students – regardless of their country of origin – who are enrolled with these education providers for higher education courses, will be considered low risk. These students hence will need to provided less information to DIBP and are expected to receive simpler and quicker visa processing. Perhaps most significantly, under the new arrangements, they are expected to show about $20,000 less in available funds in order to be granted a visa.

The changes which were flagged late last year, came into effect on 22 March 2014. Minister Scott Morrison said that he is confident that the Coalition has broken the nexus between education visas and permanent visas. “We are in the business of having a world leading international education sector in this country, not selling visas. Those reforms that have broken that nexus are important…” he said speaking at the CPD Immigration Law Conference, Sydney.

The eligible education providers for SVP for sc 573, sc 574 and sc575 now include 41 Universities and 19 non-universities.  Non-university education providers on the list are starting to see increased enrolments. One such provider, Navita’s recently reported a 6 per cent increase in enrolments to 18,862 students this year. "This solid result was driven by a more than 25 per cent increase in recruitment of international students from their source countries… Vietnam, India, Nepal and Pakistan." the company said in a statement. The listed company’s share price  on the ASX surged over 15% since the beginning of the year on news of increased enrolments and strong future prospects. 

The office of the MARA have sent out an email to the profession titled 'Update from the Office of the MARA CRM:0033861' on Thursday March 27th at 5:20 pm.  Within it is the following information:

Raising consumer awareness - New video 

(Note from me: the video is not new it was uploaded to Youtube last year in December 2013)

One of the roles of the Authority is to ensure that consumers are aware of their rights.  Of course an important way they can look after their own best interests is to use a registered agent.  We have released a YouTube video called Do you need help applying for an Australian visa? This is available through the news carousel on the homepage of our website and encourages people to choose only registered migration agents. You may wish to place a link to this video on your own webpage if you have one. Here is the link: https://www.mara.gov.au/news-and-publications/news/videos/

By increasing community knowledge of the registration scheme, we will not only provide a better service to consumers, but help discourage the use of unregistered agents.