Category Archives: 澳專新聞

從2015年年10月1日起澳大利亞護照的申請費用將有所改變

申請費用將根據不同的標準而有所不同，包括：

• 成人、兒童、老人（75歲以上）
• 有效期長度
• 定期或經常旅行版
• 優先與緊急處理要求

詳情請參閱澳大利亞護照局：www.passports.gov.au

來源：MIA

Vietnam and Nepal: New addresses for providing personal identifiers

Nepal

The changed addresses for the Australian visa application centre is:

Kathmandu

Australian Visa Application Centre

Ananda Shreei Niwas

Ward No.3, Sankha Marg – 113

Maharajganj, Kathmandu

Nepal

Vietnam

Two new offices have been opened in Vietnam of the Australian Visa Application Centre:

Hanoi

Australian Visa Application Centre

Vinafor Building, 1st Floor

127 Lo Duc Street

Hai Ba Trung District, Hanoi

Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh City

Australian Visa Application Centre

Resco Tower, 2nd Floor

94-96 Nguyen Du Street

District 1, Ho Chi Minh City

Socialist Republic of Vietnam

Source: MIA & DIBP

Melbourne private high school has been shut down

The school which generated about $1million in revenue per year from students was found to have had extensive breaches of regulations governing overseas students, according to a report on the ABC.

It remains unclear what will happen to the visas of 70 students of the school – some who reportedly paid $18,600 per year in tuition fees.

According to the ABC, documents filed with Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), indicated the failure of some students to sign in for classes for weeks at a time was not investigated by the school, despite visa requirements that stipulate they must sign in twice a day. It said that the teaching of English language was also a particular concern, with audits from 2010 to 2014 revealing the school failing to comply with VCAA standards.

The Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority (VRQA) ordered the Melbourne Senior Secondary College (MSSC) to shut down because it failed to comply with a number of matters in the Education Services for Overseas Students Act which included the following:

• Inadequate records on working with children checks for adults overseeing, living with up to 14 students under 18

• “Disturbing finding" that teachers were pressured to inflate grades

• “Serious concerns" about the academic standards and quality of education

• Unsatisfactory attendance records despite the need for data to comply with visa requirements

The school is appealing the closure order at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT). The school’s principal, Jian Wang, did not respond to email and phone messages from the ABC.

“But in his submission to the VRQA, Mr Wang countered that in the 11 years his school had been operating, 500 students had passed their VCE and the school had contributed $18 million to the Victorian economy,” notes the ABC.

Mr Wang apparently received an award from the City of Melbourne in 2010 for his contribution to small business.

Source: Migration Alliance

Somebody’s watching you and it could lead to better wages or deportation

The Fairwork ombudsman is trying to make ‘inroads’ into migrant communities through its newly appointed team of Community Engagement Officers, whose aim is to protect foreign workers on the one hand and help deport illegal workers they find along the way, on the other.

The FWO says its recently launched program aims to “foster new relationships with international student bodies and multicultural communities…to ensure migrant workers, overseas workers, international students and employers are aware of their workplace rights and responsibilities,” declared the statement from the FWO.

The program will also be used to uncover illegal workers. In June, the Fair Work Ombudsman joined with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) to form Taskforce Cadena to jointly combat the incidence of fraud and exploitation involving foreign workers in Australia. One of the stated aims of Taskforce Cadena is to utilise intelligence from a range of sources to identify and investigate major targets of interest.

The FWO statement noted that visa-holders now account for 11 per cent of all requests for assistance received by the Fair Work Ombudsman. Last financial year, the Fair Work Ombudsman recovered $1.6 million in underpaid wages and entitlements for visa-holders – up from $1.1 million in 2013-14.

FWO Ombudsman, Ms Natalie James said that the Fair Work Ombudsman has been active in this area for many years and understands that visa holders can face a number of barriers to understanding and enforcing their workplace rights.  “Youth, language and cultural differences, concerns about their visa status all contribute to these barriers and can also make them more vulnerable to exploitation,” she said.

“We are particularly concerned about the treatment of visa-holders by labour-hire contractors operating in the horticulture and poultry processing sectors. We are also conscious that exploitation of visa-holders is a persistent issue in Australia in industries known to employ high numbers of overseas workers, such as hospitality, cleaning, convenience stores and trolley collectors.”

Source: Migration Alliance

Visa Cancellation: Kicked Out Of Australia After 65 Years Of Residency

We are all familiar with the old saying that: “We are haunted by the ghosts of our past”.

This well-worn phrase has been shown to have considerable truth and force recently. There has been story after story in the news media about high profile people being caught up in allegations of sexual abuse involving decades-old incidents. One need look no further than the stories that have been reported about allegations relating to former British Prime Minister Ted Heath and to the television performers Rolf Harris and Bill Cosby. And of course the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has unearthed accounts of incidents that occurred many years ago.

These types of stories are not only pervasive in the news media. In fact, just at the end of last week, on 7 August 2015, a decision was handed down by the Federal Court of Australia that demonstrates, very powerfully, that there really is no escape from the ghosts of one’s past where sexual offences are concerned, and that events that may have seemed to have been buried and forgotten can come back to haunt a person with an absolute vengeance!

In this case, Cotterill v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection(2015) FCA 802, the Court affirmed a decision by the Minister to cancel the “absorbed person” visa of a man who had been living in Australia for approximately 65 years due to crimes he had committed many (about 40) years previously.

The basis of the visa cancellation was a series of sexual offences that Mr Cotterill had committed against his own children in the 1970s.  The most recent of the offences took place in approximately 1976. Mr Cotterill was not prosecuted for these offences until about 2012 (more than 30 years after the events). He pleaded guilty to 5 separate charges of sexual offences in November 2012 (when he was about 71 years old) and was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment on each charge. Each of the sentences was partially suspended. The ultimate result of the prosecutions was that Mr Cotterill was ordered to serve 3 months in jail.

On the basis of these convictions, the Minister found that Mr Cotterill did not satisfy the “character test”, and thus proceeded with action to cancel his absorbed person visa. Mr Cotterill was released from prison in February 2013. He was informed by the Department in September 2014 that it was considering the cancellation of his visa. The Minister cancelled the visa on 22 April 2015, and Mr Cotterill was then taken into immigration detention.  Thus, by the time his case was decided in the Federal Court, Mr Cotterill had been in immigration detention for a longer period of time than he was in prison for the underlying criminal offences.

The Minister cancelled Mr Cotterill’s visa on the basis of the convictions for the sexual offences, notwithstanding that certain “countervailing” circumstances were present in the case. These included the fact that Mr Cotterill was seen to have “long and deep ties to Australia”, resulting from his having lived here for a period of 64 years (since he migrated to Australia as a 7 year old child in 1950), his having a partner of 30 years standing who was unwell and required care from him, and his having a great many family members living in Australia.  The “countervailing” factors also included that Mr Cotterill was himself in poor health, had spent 38 years living in the Australian community since the time of the offences without committing further offences, and had also lived in the community for 2 years since the time of his release from prison.

Notwithstanding these “countervailing factors”, the Minister saw fit to cancel Mr Cotterill’s visa on the grounds that the sexual offences, having been perpetrated against his children when they were minor children, were “very serious” and on the basis that, notwithstanding the fact that the risk that Mr Cotterill might “re-offend” was considered to be “low”, it could not be said that there was “no” risk at all that he might re-offend.

Mr Cotterill’s challenge in the Federal Court to the cancellation of his visa was based on the claim that the Minister’s decision was “unreasonable”, in the sense that there was no “evident and intelligible justification” for the Minister’s findings that the offences were “serious” and that there was a risk (and not “no risk”) that he might re-offend.

In reviewing the visa holder’s claims, Justice Pagone of the Federal Court followed the recent decision of the Full Court in the case of Moana v Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (2015) FCAFC 54 concerning the applicable legal standard for review of a visa cancellation decision.

In the Moana case, the Full Court held that it is mandatory for the Minister to consider the risk of harm to the Australian community before cancelling a visa on character grounds (in other words, failure to consider the question of “risk” would amount to “jurisdictional error”). However, while the Court also held in Moana  that in most cases it will be “centrally relevant” to an evaluation of the “risk of harm” for the Minister to consider the likelihood that the visa holder might engage in future conduct that might cause harm, it is not  mandatory for the Minister to consider this factor. Further, in Moana, the Full Court held that certain criminal conduct may be sufficiently serious in and of itself that it warrants and justifies a Ministerial decision to cancel a visa on character grounds, and that no further inquiry need necessarily be taken in such serious criminal cases as to whether there is a likelihood that the visa holder will re-offend or otherwise engage in harmful conduct in the future.

In the particular circumstances of the Cotterill case, Justice Pagone of the Federal Court  concluded that the Minister’s decision, while one that might possibly be considered to be “harsh”, was not one that was “unreasonable” in the sense of not having an “evident and intelligible justification”.

Justice Pagone took the view that it was open to the Minister to make a finding that the sexual offences that the visa holder had been convicted of were “serious”, notwithstanding the fact that the sentencing judge in the underlying criminal case had characterized the offences as being at the “bottom end of the scale of sexual offences”.  Justice Pagone held that it was not unreasonable for the Minister to determine that the offences were “serious” due to the fact that they were of a sexual nature, had been committed against young children, and were, by their very nature, harmful to the victims.

Likewise, Justice Pagone ruled that it was not unreasonable for the Minister to arrive at the conclusion that there was a risk (albeit a low one), that the visa holder might re-offend.  Thus, Justice Pagone found that, notwithstanding the fact that Mr Cottterill had not committed further offences either in the 38 years since the time of the offences, or in the period of time since he had been released from prison, and notwithstanding that he had not been required to undertake a course for sex offenders while in prison, it was open to the Minister to reject a finding that there was “no” risk that the visa holder might re-offend.  Ultimately, the Court held that the fact that the visa holder had committed offences in the past was reason enough to support a conclusion that there was “a” risk of future re-offending, however low that risk might actually be.

This case demonstrates, among other things, that the Department and the Minister are apparently determined to pursue visa cancellations where visa holders have committed serious criminal offences and have been sentenced to 12 months in prison or more. That appears to be especially likely where the underlying offences are of a “sexual” nature (and thus inherently serious). In addition, it also appears evident from this case that the Department will take visa cancellation actions even in cases where the visa holder has lived in Australia for many years and has “long and deep” ties to the country, as Mr Cotterill did.

The case once again illustrates that non-citizens who commit serious criminal offences are very likely to suffer the “double sanction” of being imprisoned and then deported (and in fact, where the actual time in prison served is relatively short, the loss of the right to remain in Australia may operate as the more severe of the two forms of sanction or “punishment”).  As shown by the Cotterill decision, living in Australia from the time of early childhood, and being of advanced and in poor health may not be enough to rescue a visa holder from this consequence!

Source: Migration Alliance News Articles

Working in partnership to combat human trafficking and slavery in Australia: Australian Federal Police

Human trafficking, slavery and slavery-like practices such as servitude and forced labour are complex crimes and a violation of human rights. Around the world women, men and children are trafficked for a wide range of exploitative purposes in many different industries, including agriculture, construction, hospitality, cleaning, sex service, domestic work as well as for organ transplants and forced marriage.

While these crimes have different elements and may or may not involve the movement of a person across an international border, they all involve the manipulation of complex relationships between the offender and the victim for the purpose of exploitation. This conduct can severely undermine a person’s personal freedom and their ability to make choices for themselves.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP), along with other government agencies and non-government organisations, work to address the full cycle of human trafficking and slavery from recruitment to reintegration and give equal weight to the critical areas of prevention, enforcement and victim support. As part of this approach, the AFP continually seeks the support of critical partners, including stakeholders in Australia’s migration industry.

This article provides an insight into human trafficking in Australia and details how you can help unite with the AFP in the fight against human trafficking and slavery.

Human trafficking in Australia:

Australia is primarily a destination country for people trafficked from Asia, particularly Thailand, Korea, China, the Philippines and Malaysia.  A total of 235 suspected victims of human trafficking and slavery have received support under Australia’s Support for Trafficked People Program (STPP). Women account for the majority of these victims, with most having worked in the commercial sex industry. Recently, increasing numbers of men have been identified as victims of forced labour.  Victims have entered Australia under a range of different visas, including student, working holiday and 457 subclasses.

Understanding the nature and extent of human trafficking in Australia is an ongoing challenge. This is due to a number of factors, including the clandestine nature of these practices and the difficulty in identifying victims. Often these difficulties are compounded by the reluctance of victims to seek assistance, which exists for many reasons, including the use of threats, coercion or deception by an offender to keep a person in a situation of exploitation and isolation. Examples of this conduct include threats of deportation, physical harm to the victim or their families, or the requirement to pay off a significant debt. Migrant workers have high levels of vulnerability due to many factors including a lack of local support networks, poor English language skills and limited knowledge of Australian workplace laws and protections.

Indicators of trafficking:

The following points may indicate a person is a victim of human trafficking, slavery or slavery-like practices. If you are concerned about a person’s welfare, you could use these points as a guide to seeking information on their situation:

• the person appears to be servicing a large debt to their employer or a third party;
• the person does not possess their passport which is with their employer or a third party;
• the person does not have an employment contract/agreement, or they do not understand the terms or conditions of their employment;
• the person is unable to terminate their employment at any time;
• the person is subject to different or less favourable working conditions than other employees because they are from overseas;
• the person never or rarely leaves their accommodation for non-work reasons;
• the person is living at the place of work or another place owned or controlled by their employer;
• the person has little or no money or no access to their earnings;
• the person has physical injuries which may have resulted for assault, harsh treatment or unsafe work practices;
• the person’s activities are controlled by their employer, who does not want or allow the worker to socialise with others;
• the person works excessively long hours and has few, if any, days off; and
• the person regularly moves between different workplaces, including interstate.

Referral pathways:

The above indicators in isolation may not be enough to establish human trafficking, slavery or slavery-like practices, however, if you have concerns about the situation of a person or client, the safest approach may be to encourage and/or support them to seek the appropriate assistance and services.

It is important to give people who may have been trafficked information about available services as soon as possible. This should include information about how to contact the AFP, immigration department, specialist non-government organisations or how to obtain independent legal advice. Please see the contacts section below for further details.

If you are considering acting on behalf of a potential victim, such as contacting a service provider on their behalf, it is important to act in the best interests of the person.

Information about the person should only ever be disclosed to a third-party with the informed consent of the person. Informed consent is when a person freely agrees to a course of action (which may include doing nothing) after receiving and considering all the facts and information they need to make a decision.

If you consider a person to be in immediate danger always dial 000. Less urgent referrals or requests for advice can be made to the AFP. Information can also be provided anonymously.

Contacts:

AFP

T: 131 237

E: victim-based-crime@afp.gov.au

W:  Information and online offence reporting at www.afp.gov.au.

Australian Border Force

T: 02 6198 7559

E: People.Trafficking@border.gov.au

Fair Work Ombudsman

W: http://www.fairwork.gov.au/

Australian Red Cross

T: 03 9345 1800

E: national_stpp@redcross.org.au

W: http://www.redcross.org.au

Anti Slavery Australia

T: 02 9514 9660

E: antislavery@uts.edu.au

W: www.antislavery.org.au

Other contact points to consider include state police, the Salvation Army and worker’s unions, with these contact details and more in the Anti-Human Trafficking Community resource:http://www.ag.gov.au/CrimeAndCorruption/HumanTrafficking/Documents/Anti-HumanTraffickingCommunityResource.pdf.

Source: Migration Alliance & AFP

SC457簽證要降低對廚師的收入門檻

餐廳和餐飲業的最高機構表示，已經與政府達成了一項特別交易，使457技術移民簽證計劃更容易通過從而引進海外勞工。

根據澳大利亞餐廳及餐飲（R＆CA）發布的聲明，該行業目前正經歷嚴重的短缺，需要56000工人來填補廚師和餐廳經理位置。R＆CA是綜合約35,000間遍布澳大利亞的餐廳及餐飲企業的代表。

聲明說，咖啡廳，餐廳和外賣食品服務需要額外的43,700個工作崗位來應付該行業的就業增長。預計該行業的就業增長會比澳大利亞其他任何部門都高，增長圍繞8.5％。

為了應對”長期勞工短缺”，勞資協議將會降低臨時技術移民（TSMIT）的收入門檻10％以符合特定條件的餐廳。

R＆C A首席執行官John Hart表示，這溫和的讓步意味著經營者將更有能力僱用海外工人，他們應該能夠解決業務的長期勞工短缺問題。

根據餐廳（美食）行業勞工合同，企業要使技術移民工人達到一定標準，包括有幫助客人點菜能力，穿認可的制服和在技術，資格和英語上達到所需要求。

在2014-15財政年度，住宿和食品服務業是457臨時工作（技術）簽證計劃的最大用戶，有4,350個應用。

廚師，咖啡廳和餐廳經理和廚師為主要應用排名的前15位的職業提名。

來源：移民聯盟

什麼新學生簽證處理系統是你需要了解的

AFR的報告指出, 在2016中期引進的學生簽證系統, 民辦高校發現澳洲蓬勃發展的國際學生的業務會更容易帶來收益。Coalition government’s報告詳細指出新系統為簡化未來的簽證處理。

根據擬議的新的學生簽證制度，外國留學生將必須接受學生簽證類別的數量從八種減少到只有兩種。

Rod Camm, CEO of the Australian Council for Private Education and Training (ACPET) 告訴Australian Financial Review澳大利亞的學生簽證系統目前如此複雜，院校參加教育展最終花費一半的時間來解釋簽證的制度而不是談論教育質量，並指出澳大利亞是業務開放的而複雜的簽證使其困難。”

其中的關鍵問題是兩個分層的風險評估框架。根據新系統的應用，預計以一個單一的框架進行移民風險評估: the Simplified Student Visa Framework (SSVF) 。它將取代雙方流線型簽證處理（SVP）安排和評估等級（AL）框架。

SSVF將主要每年給教育機構和國家排名，根據他們過去的12個月期間國際學生的移民風險結果。顯然，它有望給教育機構動力去招收真誠學生和慢慢擠掉高風險的教育提供者。

Universities Australia Deputy Chief Executive, Anne-Marie Lansdown說我們支持風險管理的方法對學生簽證，獎勵低風險的教育機構獲取簽證的簡單流程。

來源：移民聯盟

欺詐警告：上百萬澳元的移民騙局被揭露

澳洲警方繳獲了價值850萬澳元的財產，包括一輛2014年的法拉利，一輛2015年的陸虎覽勝，六座房產和180萬澳元現金；逮捕並指控了三名男子一系列的關於移民的涉及澳大利亞郵政送貨司機的犯罪行為。

通過對整個墨爾本的搜捕，Baljit “Bobby" Singh、Rakesh Kumar和Mukesh Sharma落網，他們面臨的指控是“關於兩所培訓學院的詐騙英聯邦和偽造文件行為，包括品行記錄檢查和學生檔案。”

ABC報告指出，“澳大利亞聯邦警察指控，由Singh和Kumar共同擁有的St Stephen Institute of Technology，以及由Sharma擁有的Symbiosis Institute of Technical Education，實際上並不提供教育，而是被用於幫助印度學生拿到澳洲簽證然後去Singh的勞動力租賃澳大利亞郵政公司做郵遞員和送包裹的工作。該學院收取海外學生高達1萬澳元的定金，卻不提供任何教育培訓。”

澳大利亞聯邦警察估計，學生們被收取了超過900萬澳元的費用，而該學院同時還從政府那裡拿到作為註冊培訓機構的大約200萬澳元的資助。

澳大利亞郵政管理收到了牽連，他們的公司合作收到了質疑，根據維多利亞州郵遞員工會的秘書長Joan Doyle，“大約有100名工人……而其中有60人是持有學生簽證的”。該公司有16個與澳大利亞郵政的合同，ABC估計其中4個有每個月6萬澳元的價值。

ABC報導說，澳大利亞郵政之前曾經就Singh先生被指控的少付工人工資和使用學生勞動力的事宜的被工會連續好幾年的警告過，儘管該公司直到目前仍然堅持沒有證據顯示他們的不法行為。

Joan Doyle說，這個逮捕事件對澳大利亞郵政對其承包商的監測以及政府的資金是如何被花費的提出了質疑。

在ABC的7.30節目報導的一系列關於租賃公司少付承包貨運司機工資故事後，澳大利亞郵政宣布他們已擴大針對貨運承包商的程序，包括現場審計。

來源：移民聯盟

新移民想在澳大利亞成功需要具備什麼

根據一份澳大利亞移民委員會的報導，新拿到永久居留權的移民通常比他們的前輩和平均澳大利亞人擁有更高的學歷和收入。

許多澳大利亞人沒有跟上國家的經濟轉變- 從製造業和資源向多元化高技能的服務經濟。在過去20年裡澳大利亞的移民政策幫助填補了這一空白，“使其產生結構性的變化來促使無縫供應擴大技術行業所需的人力資本”，MCA報告指出。

該報告根據ABS最新的統計信息，以獲得一個澳大利亞移民項目執行情況的深入畫面，並提供近期澳大利亞移民人口的社會經濟特徵的概述。

該報告總結說，“英語的熟練程度是移民在勞動力市場上的決定因素，它比工作經歷和學歷更為重要……對於新移民來說，提高英語水平是唯一一個最有效的帶來經濟好處的方法。”

該報告還指出，那些不會英語或者英語水平低的移民一直以來都面臨著一個10-20%的收入差距。相比之下，那些擁有很好英文水平的新移民則在勞動力市場蓬勃發展，甚至超越了那些在澳大利亞居住了幾十年的、英語是母語的同行們。

該報告警告說，由於技術工作和高科技服務行業在現在的經濟狀況下被優先考慮，可以說好英文和不能說英文的人之間的差距正在增長，並且，由於技能和英語語言能力的不同，性別差異越來越大- 女性移民遠遠落後。

來源：移民聯盟