News

The Federal Budget announced a raft of new changes to immigration policy on the 9 May 2017. Whilst most of these changes will not take place immediately, you should begin thinking about how this affects you. Temporary Sponsored Parent visa The new temporary sponsored parent visa will be introduced in November 2017, with 15,000 visas to be made available annually. This visa will allow the temporary stay of sponsored parents in Australia for periods of up to three or five years. The visa may be renewed from outside Australia to allow a cumulative stay of up to ten years. Temporary sponsored parent visa holders will not be eligible to apply onshore for a permanent parent visa. The visa holder’s sponsor, their Australian child, will have legal liability for any public health expenditure (including aged care arrangements) incurred by the visa holder in Australia. The Department will undertake a review of this new visa at the end of the first program year. * Existing contributory and non-contributory parent visas will remain unchanged and open to new applicants.   Age Pension and Disability Support Pension (DSP) eligibility From 1 July 2018, stricter residency rules for new migrants to access Australian pensions will be introduced.  Claimants will be required to have 15 years of continuous Australian residence before being eligible to receive the Age Pension or DSP unless they have either: 10 years continuous Australian residence, with five years of this residence being during their working life (16 years of age to Age Pension age); or 10 years continuous Australian residence, without having received an activity tested income support payment for a cumulative period of five years. Existing exemptions for DSP applicants who acquire their disability in Australia will continue to apply.   Foreign Investors A Foreign Investors Tax Levy of $5000 per year will be imposed on foreign investors who do not occupy or lease their Australian properties for at least 6 months of the year. The Government will extend Australia’s foreign resident capital gains tax (CGT) regime by: denying foreign and temporary tax residents access to the CGT main residence exemption from 7:30PM (AEST) on 9 May 2017, however existing properties held prior to this date will be grandfathered until 30 June 2019 increasing the CGT withholding rate for foreign tax residents from 10.0 per cent to 12.5 per cent, from 1 July 2017 reducing the CGT withholding threshold for foreign tax residents from $2 million to $750,000, from 1 July 2017   The Government will also apply the principal asset test on an associate inclusive basis from 7:30PM (AEST) on 9 May 2017, for foreign tax residents with indirect interests in Australian real property. This will ensure foreign tax residents will not be able to avoid a CGT liability by disaggregating indirect interests in Australian real property.   Humanitarian Programme The number of refugee resettlement places will increase by 2,500 to a total of 16,250 places in the 2017-18 programme. In addition, the Community Support Programme will be expanded to offer 1000 sponsored refugee resettlement places. This programme enables individuals, groups and businesses to sponsor humanitarian entrants to Australia. Sponsors will be required to support humanitarian entrants during their first year in Australia, including funding the visa application, airfares and settlement services, and refunding any working age payments made to the humanitarian entrant. All permanent humanitarian visa holders, including Community Support Programme entrants, will continue to have access to Medicare, English language tuition and employment services (if eligible). An additional $21.2 million will be allocated in 2017-18 to continue regional processing and resettlement arrangements. This includes funding to support the closure of the Manus Island facility in Papua New Guinea, and of regional processing activities in Nauru Savings of $46.8 million will be achieved over the five years from 2016-17 by resolving the protection status of Illegal Maritime Arrivals (IMAs).

Partner Visa Onshore Partner processing leading up to the end of the program year will no longer follow the normal rules but instead the following will be applied (link to original): processing no longer by month of lodgement priority to be given to low-risk, fully front-end loaded applications that immediately satisfy Partner criteria.  South Australia State Nomination for Skilled Migration Immigration SA have announced the following changes today : High points nomination From 9.00am (Australian Central Standard Time) on 19 April 2017 the requirement for high points nomination will increase from 80 to 85 points. This change is in response to the overall quota being achieved under the existing 80 points requirement. This change will not affect applications lodged prior to this time. Applications for high points nomination received after this time will be refused if they do not meet the 85 points requirement. High points and chain migration exclusions: Effective immediately the following occupations on the Supplementary Skilled List are no longer available for high points or chain migration nomination: 221111 Accountant (General) 223111 Human Resource Adviser (not available for high points since 02/09/2016) 225113  Marketing Specialist 225412  Sales Representative (Medical and Pharmaceutical Products) 242111 University Lecturer 242112 University Tutor 251511  Hospital Pharmacist 251513  Retail Pharmacist This change does not affect applications lodged prior to 1pm on 5 April 2017.Applications for these occupations lodged after this time will be refused if applying for high points or chain migration nomination. Please contact us if you would like to discuss how any of these changes have affected or will affect you.

Fast-food outlets such as McDonald’s, KFC and Hungry Jack’s will no longer be able to bring foreign workers into Australia on 457 visas to work in their stores.   Peter Dutton, the minister for immigration and border protection, has announced he will end the fast-food industry labour agreement entered into by the Gillard government in 2012.

Affinity Migration was invited by BizCover to be part of its 2016 promotional video and the opportunity was just too good to pass up. Many thanks to BizCover for the videographer, editing team and makeup to make us look good on camera.

Happy Australia Day!!! Australia Day, 26 January, is the anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet of 11 convict ships from Great Britain, and the raising of the Union Jack at Sydney Cove by its commander Captain Arthur Phillip, in 1788. Though 26 January marks this specific event, today Australia Day celebrations reflect contemporary Australia: our diverse society and landscape, our remarkable achievements and our bright future. It also is an opportunity to reflect on our nation’s history, and to consider how we can make Australia an even better place in future. On Australia Day, half of the nation’s population of 24 million attend either an organised community event, or get together with family and friends with the intention of celebrating our national day. Many more spend the public holiday relaxing with family and friends. Yet Australia Day is much more than barbeques and fireworks. It is more than another public holiday. It is more than the pride and excitement of new citizens who call themselves Australian for the first time on 26 January after being conferred citizenship. At its core, Australia Day is a day driven by communities, and the celebrations held in each town, suburb or city – unified by the celebration of what’s great about Australia and being Australian – are the foundation of its ongoing success.

Calculating whether you have met the requirements for Australian Citizenship can be one of the trickiest things you will encounter. This is because over a 4 year period people can forget when they traveled abroad and this is further complicated when you change passports or if the travel dates are not captured in your emails. Here is a Residence Calculator released by Immigration to help assess your eligibility: https://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Ente/Retu/residence-calculator The alternative is to call Immigration and ask them if you qualify or not. What can be EVEN MORE frustrating is incorrectly thinking you meet the requirements, only to find out after lodging the application that you did not meet the requirements. This means you have wasted TIME and MONEY. GOOD NEWS. Whilst you may never recover the time, you may be able to recover your money under the new changes: refund the whole or part of a fee payable for an application for a notice of evidence of citizenship if a person has made the application as a result of incorrect advice given by the Department; if you made a genuine error in your first application and lodge the subsequent application within one year after the first application was refused, there is no further application fee.