Jin Liu: registration cancelled by OMARA on 28 Aug 2020

What the Authority decided

On 28 August 2020 the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (the Authority) cancelled the registration of migration agent Ms Jin LIU (MARN 1468279). Following an investigation into one complaint, the Authority found that Ms LIU:

• acted in contravention of the sections 245AR and 245AS of the Migration Act 1958 (the Act) by facilitating payments from her client to a sponsoring business in exchange for the client’s employment and sponsorship, and benefitted financially from this arrangement;
• was aware that a sponsor, who was also her client, was breaching their sponsorship obligations and exploiting the visa applicant by reducing her agreed salary by more than half upon grant of the nomination and visa applications;
• continued to lodge other nomination applications for this sponsor with the knowledge that the sponsor was not complying with their sponsorship obligations and was exposing other visa applicants to exploitation;
• misled the Authority as to her knowledge and involvement in the payment for visa arrangement and underpayment of her affected client;
• required visa applicant clients to cover the financial costs of being sponsored by their employers;
• did not comply with her statutory requirements under section 308(1) of the Act to provide the Authority with all records of her accounts for inspection despite being given multiple opportunities and time to do so; and
• breached multiple clauses of the Code of Conduct for registered migration agents (the Code) indicating repeated poor practice and a failure to satisfy, and possess the requisite knowledge of, her professional obligations.

The Authority was satisfied that Ms Liu had engaged in conduct in breach of her obligations under clauses 2.1, 2.9A, 5.2, 5.5, 6.1, 6.1A, 7.1A, 7.2, 7.4, 7.5, and 9.3 of the Code and was not a person of integrity or is otherwise not a fit and proper person to give immigration assistance.

A redacted 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 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 cancellation means if this was your agent

The registration is removed. The agent's name comes off the Register of Migration Agents and they may not give immigration assistance. A cancellation is usually accompanied by a period during which the person may not be registered again.

Nobody is acting on your matter right now. Treat this as urgent, and start with who the Department is writing to.

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 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.