Only use a REGISTERED Migration Agent
Published by Nora Lamont on Saturday 24th of October, 2009
Registered migration agents are the only professionals in Australia registered by the commonwealth to provide migration advice and assistance. Always make sure to use a registered agent. See the article from today’s Melbourne Age newspaper on what happens to unregistered agents and those who use them:
AN UNREGISTERED migration agent was arrested in a raid at her suburban home yesterday and is set to be charged with multiple migration fraud and identity crime offences over Melbourne’s biggest international student cash-for-certificates scam.
The Chinese-born woman was taken from her Carnegie home by members of the Australian Federal Police Identity Security Strike Team and federal immigration officers. The office of her ”migration and legal service” in Queen Street in the city was then raided and computers and documents seized.
An Immigration Department spokesman said an ”unlawful non-citizen” was also arrested at the Queen Street office.
The spokesman said: ”It is alleged that, for a fee, those involved have been providing clients with fraudulent education qualifications and bogus documentation to support their permanent residency applications.”
It will be alleged that more than 250 Chinese and Indian students in Melbourne were involved and that the paperwork was from education providers and also workplaces.
The Age has learnt that a CBD trades school allegedly supplying the woman with education certificates was recently deregistered after being investigated by state regulators.
In separate cases, students have been charged up to $20,000 for fake certificates from colleges and workplaces they never attend. The students in the latest scam face deportation or detention under migration fraud regulations because they may have used false documents to gain residency.
The arrest yesterday is linked to a series of raids last December in which nine businesses were searched but no arrests made. It was alleged then the central business raided, Hong Yun International in Little Collins Street, was an unregistered migration agency.
