Migration agents disciplined by the regulator

What each outcome means

If this was your agent: the first week

1. Find out where your application actually is. If you have an ImmiAccount, log in. The clock does not stop because your representation did.
2. 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.
3. Get your file. Your documents are yours and the Code requires them back — originals first. How to get your file back.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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 a decision here does not mean

A caution is not a cancellation. An agent cautioned years ago who has practised without incident since is in good standing, and reading this as a blacklist misreads it.

A decision can be reviewed, and an agent who has sought review is entitled to its outcome. A sanction against one person says nothing about a firm: only an individual can be a registered migration agent, and colleagues are unaffected by a decision about a colleague. And an old decision is old — look at the date.

Checking anyone yourself

The Register of Migration Agents tells you whether a MARN is current and who it belongs to. The disciplinary decisions register tells you whether that person has been cautioned, suspended, cancelled or barred, and it searches by family name, given name or MARN. Both are public and free. See how to check a migration agent in ninety seconds.

The fuller write-up is in the guide library: what the OMARA register shows, and what to do if it was your agent.

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.