Migration Agents are starting to have a serious concerns in relation to Vevo.
As Migration Alliance RMAs would know, with visa labels now non-existent, our reliance on Vevo is paramount in determining the current status of a visa holder.
An email this morning from an RMA to the Migration Alliance This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
email says,
'I feel that this is not as reliable and cant be trusted to determine the true status of any given visa holder.
For example, recently upon checking the visa status of one of my applicants, the Vevo records showed that he was the current holder of a 119 visa and this visa was "in effect" and he was offshore.
However, I knew this to be incorrect due to the applicant did not arrive onshore before his deadline date on his original visa approval.
So I emailed DIAC to request a true status and they confirmed that the applicant is not able to arrive onshore with this visa.
This being the case, if I was not to know this already, how would I advise my client based on the Vevo information alone?
He would have flown to Australia at great expense and been refused entry only at our Immigration dept at the airport.
Surely that's a bit late to be discovering that the Vevo verification was incorrect.
This is not the first time I have had reliability issues with Vevo showing the incorrect current visa status.'
As we Migration Agents only have this database to rely on now that visa labels have disappeared, surely it is of utmost importance that DIAC get this right.
Migration Alliance has sent an urgent email in to DIAC via the NSW Client Reference Group this morning and hopefully soon will be able to enlighten agents on this discrepancy. We are hopeful that DIAC will actually take action to fix these vital shortcomings of their Vevo system.