Note from Dinesh Weerakkody: Government must also take blame for giving such people registration and providing the ability for agents to provide legal advice on Migration matters though not having a law degree. The government has created or helped the perception that all migration agents are lawyers.
Agent Sanctions
Decision Date11 Mar 2013
Agent Name: Qian, Weiming
Registration Number(MARN):0319964
Decision: Cancellation
Decision Summary: The Authority investigated seventeen complaints about the agent. Seven of the complaints had been previously closed and were re-opened after the Authority received further complaints about the agent that appeared to establish a pattern of conduct over a long period of time.
Each of the complaints related to the agent’s assistance to clients to lodge protection visa applications with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (`the Department’) and related review applications with the Refugee Review Tribunal (`the Tribunal’) and Federal Magistrates Court (`the Court’).
The Authority found that the agent knowingly and systematically undermined the processes of the Department, the Tribunal, and the Court at considerable public expense and to the detriment of her client’s best interests by:
- Facilitating the performance of immigration work by colleagues who were not registered migration agents and thus legally prohibited from performing such work.
- Performing immigration legal work despite not holding a legal practicing certificate and thus not being qualified to perform such work. The agent also referred clients to similarly unqualified persons to whom she was related by business.
- Assisting clients to fabricate protection visa claims.
- Providing a poor standard of assistance to clients at considerable cost to those clients.
Following this investigation the Authority was satisfied that the Agent had breached the following clauses of the Code of Conduct: 2.1, 2.3A, 2.4, 2.8, 2.9, 2.9A, 2.17, 2.23, 3.5, 4.1, 5.2, 5.5, 6.1, 6.1A, 6.2, 7.4, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.5.
A registered migration is required to be a person of integrity, and a fit and proper to provide immigration assistance. On the basis of its findings in these complaints, the Authority decided that the Agent was not capable of meeting this standard, and cancelled her registration.
The Agent has applied for a review of this decision to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
We have sourced information from the relevant statutory instruments, from much legal literature for this article including from mara.gov.au
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For legal advice please contact
Dinesh Weerakkody LLB; PDLP
Barrister & Solicitor (An Australian Legal Practitioner)
An Australian Migration Agent (0742843)
President – LawHelp Australia
Treasurer – Eastern Suburbs Law Association (ESLA) of LIV
Law Institute Migration Law Committee- Member
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