Monica Gruszka: registration suspended by OMARA on 9 Jun 2022
Registration suspended for a period. During it the agent may not lawfully give immigration assistance.
The decision stated a period of for a period of 3 year from 9 Jun 2022, which ended on 9 Jun 2025. This person may since have been registered again. This page is a record of a past decision and does not tell you their current status — check the Register of Migration Agents for that.
Reported from the OMARA disciplinary decisions register, read on 11 Sep 2026. The register is the authoritative source and it changes: decisions are reviewable, and suspensions and bars expire. Check it before you act on anything here.
What the Authority decided
Decision Date: 9 June 2022
Agent Name: Monica Christine Gruszka
MARN: 1795131
Decision: Suspension
On 9 June 2022, the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (the Authority) suspended the registration of migration agent Ms Monica Christine Gruszka (MARN: 1795131) for a period of 3 years and subject to conditions following an investigation into three complaints in relation to the Agent’s conduct.
The Authority found that the Agent acted in contravention of section 312A of the Act; failed to act on client instructions; submitted applications without her clients’ instruction, knowledge, or consent and engaged in conduct that resulted in her clients becoming unlawful non-citizens. The Agent failed to display a sound working knowledge of migration law and procedure and acted in a manner that unnecessarily increased the cost for her clients.
The Authority was satisfied the Agent failed to act in the legitimate interest of her clients, misled her clients throughout the processing of their applications; and failed to respond to requests from the Department, the AAT, and the Authority.
The Authority found the Agent and was not a person of integrity, or otherwise not a fit and proper person to give immigration assistance. The Agent was found to be in breach of clauses 2.1, 2.3, 2.4, 2.8, 2.9, 2.18, 2.19, 2.23, 5.3, 5.5, 7.2, 9.3, 10.1B, 10.5 and Part 6 of the former Code of Conduct for Registered Migration Agents.
An abridged version of the Authority’s decision can be accessed below. Personal details have been removed in the interests of protecting the privacy of the persons involved.
The Agent lodged an application for review of the Authority's decision with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on 10 June 2022. The Tribunal issued an interim stay of the suspension on 15 June 2022. On 23 June 2022 the Tribunal ordered that the reviewable decision be stayed until the hearing and determination of the review.
On 20 July 2022, the Authority lodged in the Federal Court of Australia an originating application for judicial review of the Tribunal’s decision to stay the reviewable decision until the hearing and determination of the review. On 16 May 2023, the Federal Court determined that the Tribunal's decision made on 23 June 2022 be quashed. The court ordered that:
- the Tribunal's decision ceased to have effect at midnight on 17 July 2022
- the Agent's registration ceased at midnight on 17 July 2022
On 06 July 2023 the Agent withdrew her appeal against her suspension in the Tribunal. The suspension of the Agent's registration stands meaning that she cannot provide immigration assistance.
The decision summary above is reproduced from the Authority's published record of this decision, which also carries the decision document itself. Nothing has been added to it.
What a suspension means if this was your agent
The registration is suspended for a set period. During it the agent may not lawfully give immigration assistance — not to you, not to anyone. Section 280 of the Migration Act makes paid immigration assistance by an unregistered person a criminal offence, and a suspended agent is unregistered for the duration.
This is the outcome that most often catches people mid-matter, because the agent is still there and the suspension has an end date. If your matter can wait, it may be able to wait. If you have a response deadline from the Department inside the suspension period, it cannot.
If this was your agent: the first week
- Find out where your application actually is. If you have an ImmiAccount, log in. The clock does not stop because your representation did.
- Check who the Department is writing to. A Form 956 makes an agent the authorised recipient, and correspondence sent to them is taken to have been given to you. A deadline sent to an inbox nobody reads is still a deadline.
- Get your file. Your documents are yours and the Code requires them back — originals first. How to get your file back.
- Work out what was paid and what was done. Ask for the itemised invoices and receipts the Code requires. Routes to recover money work better started early.
- Complain, if there is something to complain about. A published decision does not close your own file. Where to complain, and what OMARA can and cannot do.
- Only then, find someone else. A new agent needs the file and the dates. The first five steps are what make that first conversation useful instead of exploratory.
What this decision does not mean
It is a decision about one individual on one date. Only a person can be a registered migration agent — a company cannot — so it says nothing about anyone else at the same practice. Decisions of this kind are reviewable, and bars and suspensions expire. The register is where the current position lives.
Decision information sourced from the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority and used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence. VisaBid is not affiliated with OMARA or the Department of Home Affairs.
If you are named here and something does not match the published decision — including where a decision has since been set aside, varied, or has expired — tell us and we will correct or remove it. We report what the register says; when the register changes, this should change with it.
This page reports a regulator's decision and explains in general terms what that kind of decision means. It is not immigration assistance and not legal advice, and it cannot take your circumstances into account. Only a registered migration agent or an Australian legal practitioner may advise you on your own application.
Finding someone else
Post what you need and registered migration agents and Australian legal practitioners quote you for it in writing — a fixed fee, or an hourly rate with an hours estimate, GST included, with government charges itemised separately so a cheap-looking quote cannot quietly leave one out. Applicants pay nothing. Every quote carries the individual's MARN or practising certificate details, so you can run the same check that brought you here.
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