The Londoner

By Sikander Hayat  As per this story in BBC, Australia wants UK to open its doors to Australian immigrants in order for Mrs May to secure a free trade deal with Australia . Now as far as I can recall, the whole Brexit issue was about immigration numbers which stood at an influx of half a million people per year into UK.  If Mrs May's conservative governmen t signs such a deal with Australia or for that matter India ( with India's 1.2 billion populatio n ready to get on the next plane to UK), what was the point of Brexit and all the pain that country has gone through over the last year and will go through for many years to come. The main reason behind Brexit is an overflowing national health service , overflowing schools, overflowing roads, crowded cities without adequate housing and general lack of resources to accommodate a large number of people. Any deal which ends up getting more people in to UK will be rejected by the people who voted to leave European...

The head of a major migration scam not only deceived the Australian government but fooled the parents of international students that their children had graduated with high scores from Melbourne’s best universities. Investigators estimate fake migration agent Qi Zhou’s fraudulent scheme generated more than $12 million in fees from mostly Chinese students. Zhou’s Collins Street business targeted students who sought migration assistance and also arranged sham marriages to obtain Australian residency. Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday heard staff at Hong Yun International (HYI) provided a range of false documents and services to support clients’ visa applications. Advertisement These included false and fraudulently altered documents from institutions that included Melbourne, Monash and Deakin, RMIT and Swinburne universities. The court heard many students had failed to obtain suitably high scores or had droppe...

Tucked away in Friday’s Reserve Bank statement on monetary policy is the assumption that Canberra is too afraid to make: Australia’s working age population will grow by 1.7 per cent over the next 2 years “in line with the recent pick-up in the rate of immigration”. Ever since Kevin Rudd made the mistake of calling a population of 40-odd million “Big Australia”, politicians on both sides have run a mile from population growth figures. Government and opposition alike prefer to ignore population questions and, when cornered, tend to resort to various weasel words to give the impression that nothing much is happening and we should all just move along. It’s even Liberal Party policy to out-source migration levels to the Productivity Commission so that politicians won’t be held responsible. But what both sides of politics know and quietly go along with is that 40 million is not actually a “Big Australia” – it’s simply what we have to have to handle the strain of Baby Boomers...

Immigration consultancy is big business in the UAE. Immigration aspirants pay thousands in fees for assistance in applying for immigration, especially to Canada and Australia. However, some clients complain of fraudulent consultants. And consultants claim, their complaints are unreasonable or wrongly addressed.   Applicants who complaint of lack of services by immigration consultants, often demand a full or partial refund, which is not justifiable in each and every case, say the consultants.   Policy changes   According to Sohail Saleem, general manager of Premiers Consultancy, a lot of the complaints are the result of the frequently changing immigration policy of Canada, which has affected qualifying applications retroactively.   According to him, this can be traced back to 2008, when the Canadian government started implementing a series of reform movements intending to bring back the waiting time of approximately 40 months to less tha...

Melbourne: A Pakistan refugee and aspiring cricketer , who helped the Australian team train ahead of their first Test against South Africa , has been given permission to stay in Australia. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said in a statement on Thursday that he had personally considered Fawad Ahmed's case "and decided to grant a permanent visa for him to be able to stay, work and play cricket in Australia." Ahmed fled persecution in northern Pakistan two years ago after receiving death threats from religious extremists who accused him of promoting Western values. Last week, Cricket Australia flew Ahmed from Melbourne to Brisbane to help the team's batsmen prepare for their first Test against South Africa. Ahmed's delivery style is similar to South African legspinner Imran Tahir. Ahmed's refugee claim was initially rejected by the Refugee Review Tribunal, but subsequent attempts were supported by Cricket Australia Chief Executi...

NEARLY 1000 asylum seekers have died trying to reach Australia in the past decade, and 27 have died in Australian detention centres in the past 12 years, according to Border Crossing Observatory data. Monash University criminologist and Australian Research Council future fellow Sharon Pickering, who works at the observatory, warns those numbers could be higher but it's impossible to know, since no official record is kept by a government agency. Why did you being compiling a database? When [my colleague] Dr Leanne Weber and I began the Australian Border Deaths Database and made it publicly available, we noticed Australia was well behind Europe and North America in terms of identifying and responding to border-related deaths. How? Europe and North America had been compiling significant data on the ways peo...

Melbourne. Activists in Australia have expressed concern over a recent decision by the government to reinstate the processing of asylum seekers offshore. “This policy will see asylum seekers sent to Nauru [in the Pacific] or Manus Island [Papua New Guinea (PNG)] before having their refugee status assessed in a move Australia hopes will circumvent its international human rights obligations,” Benjamin Pynt, the director of Humanitarian Research Partners, based in Australia, told IRIN. “It will deny asylum seekers the right to claim protection in Australia and exclude these people from the justice system.” Currently 386 people are awaiting processing of their claims on Nauru, with another 47, including 16 children, on Manus Island, which reopened its doors on November 21. Most asylum seekers on Manus are Sri Lankan and Iranian, while Nauru has mainly people from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, with smaller numbers from Iraq and Iran. On August 15, the government returne...

Australia’s Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Chris Bowen, will visit the regional processing centre for asylum seekers on Manus Island during a visit to Papua New Guinea this week. Mr Bowen is heading to Port Moresby for the Australia-PNG Ministerial Forum which will include talks on immigration cooperation between the two countries. He says it’s an opportunity to visit Manus where 47 people have so far been sent under Canberra’s re-introduced offshore processing policy. Read the full story here.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Goldman Sachs has established a fund to capitalise on the growing trend for wealthy Chinese citizens to seek resident status in western countries. The fund will help wealthy Asians to apply for Australian visas under the Significant Investor Pathway scheme which opened for applications on 24th November 2012.. As China grows richer, more and more of its citizens are applying for residency or citizenship overseas. According to WealthInsight, a company which assembles data about 'high net worth individuals', there are 7,905 people living in the People's Republic of China who have assets worth more than US$30m and many, many more who are dollar millionaires. Fears about the sustainability of the Chinese economy, worries about changes which may be introduced by the new leadership, which has recently taken control in China, and a desire for more freedom may all contribute to the trend for the Chinese super-rich to apply for vi...

While Australia tries to steer boats crammed with immigrants away from its shores, it is beckoning wealthy foreigners with a new visa that smooths the path to Australian residency — for a price. Under a new visa program that goes into effect Sunday, skilled migrants don’t have to pass the usual tests that rate their skills, experience and English ability. The age limit is out the window. But there’s something extra that would-be Australians need to do to be eligible: Invest more than $5.2 million in Australia. Migration agents are reportedly calling it “ the golden visa .” Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has plugged the program as a way to boost the Australian economy and compete for “high net-worth individuals.” Investors can plunk their money into government bonds, managed funds that invest in Australian assets, or Australian companies that meet specific standards and aren’t listed on the stock exchange. It was no...

Education agents attend a briefing at the Australian embassy in Beijing over rule changes to international student visas. Picture: Boaz Arad Source: Supplied NEW rules for deciding whether or not to grant a student visa are subjective, unpredictable and vulnerable to any prejudices of local staff in Australia's offshore missions, commentators say. Sydney immigration lawyer David Bitel said the new "genuine temporary entrant" test gave "total discretion based on subjective criteria to case officers". "There is a belief among minority groups (such as Muslims in India or Hindus in Bangladesh) that processing officers can use their prejudice to deny visas." In line with the Knight visa reforms, the government has applied the GTE test since November last year to discourage those whose real purpose is suspected to be work or migration, rather than study. It can be held agains...

A diplomatic coup for Abbott: Sheridan Foreign editor Greg Sheridan says that Tony Abbott's meeting with the Indonesian president shows Indonesia is prepared to deal with him if ... Play 0:00 / 4:07 Scrubber mute Share Fullscreen The latest asylum-seeker boat arrives at Christmas Island's Flying Fish Cove yesterday, carrying just six passengers. Source: The Australian TONY Abbott raised the Coalition's border-protection policies in his face-to-face talks with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, including the interception of people-smuggler boats. The controversial Coalition policy of turning back boats to Indonesian waters was discussed in detail at lower-level talks after the leaders' meeting. Julia Gillard and Immigration Minister Chris Bowen yesterday accused the Opposition Leader of lacking "the guts" to talk to Dr Yudhoyono in...

If you would like to assess your own chances of gaining a permanent residency visa for Australi a, based on the General Skilled Migration points system for offshore visas, then please complete the form below and your points score will be calculated for you! Afterwards, if you have further questions that you wish to ask an Australian immigration consultant regarding the points test, please fill out our enquiry form or set up a face-to-face consultation by calling +44 (0)344 991 9222. For further information on the points system and the basic requirements for migrating to Australia , please see the section on Australia on our website. Please note that the current pass mark as of July 1st, 2011 is 65 points. To check your score, click here. HOME

Australia will fast-track residency for people who can invest at least $5 million in the country, under new rules to be introduced by the Federal Government. The Wall Street Journal reported  that the visa regulation overhaul, announced by the center-left Labor government on Friday, was designed to attract investors and entrepreneurs. Normally, would-be immigrants are assessed according to age, qualifications and English language skills, the WSJ wrote. They must also reside in the country for a period of time before they qualify. However, from July 1, those able to invest in state and territory bonds, managed funds, or directly into Australian companies will receive concessional treatment when applying for permanent residency. Several countries, including the UK, Canada, Singapore and New Zealand already allow migration on the basis of investment. Read the full story here. 

Immigration minister Chris Bowen last week granted the first of many expected Enterprise Migration Agreements, which allow for the short-term employment of foreign workers in the mining sector. It was given to an iron ore mine in north-western Australia, part-owned by the country's richest person, Gina Rinehart. It will allow for more than 1,700 foreign workers to be employed at the project over a three-year period. While good news for thousands of immigrant workers looking to gain employment in Australia's rich natural resources sector, there are fears among local workers that Australians will lose out. Mr Bowen said: "The government's first priority is always ensuring jobs for Australian workers, but there is a need for temporary workers to help keep our economy strong." Read the full story here.