News Update: Minister to Provide Documents Through ImmiAccount from 1 September 2019
Schedule 2 of the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (Miscellaneous Measures) Act 2019 (the new Act) sets out the method by which the documents can be made available to a Visa Applicant.
The method consists of the Minister making the “document available by way of an online account of the recipient”.
According to the explanatory memorandum, the ‘online account’ will be the ImmiAccount.
The new Act received the Royal Assent on 1 March 2019. It contains Schedules 1 to 6. The Schedule 2 concerning the provision of documents, commences on a single day to be fixed by proclamation. However, if the provisions of Schedule 2 do not commence within the period of 6 months beginning on 1 March 2019, it will commence on the day after the end of that period which comes to be at the end of 1 September 2019.
Schedule 2 further adds that “if the Minister gives a document to a person via ImmiAccount, the person is taken to have received the document at the end of the day on which it is made available”.
Feedback
The only concern is that the new Act does not make it clear as to whether ImmiAccount will automatically send users and recipients any messages (such as emails) to notify them once the document is made available by the Minister on ImmiAccount. If not, then agents and practitioners will have to log into ImmiAccount every day to open each and every pending application in order to find out if the documents have “been made available” on ImmiAccount.
If this is the case, it would add unnecessary administrative work and stress to those practitioners with dozens or even hundreds of pending applications.
Final Note
It is very common nowadays to see how a visa applicant’s lives can be adversely affected if they or their agent do not check their ImmiAccount and it turns out for example, they run out of time to make an application for a merits review. Please click this article for more information relating to serious repercussions resulting from not checking your ImmiAccount.
With the new Act coming into effect very soon, it is important that we get in the habit of setting reminders to check our ImmiAccount, because things are only getting more difficult with the DOHA…