Your visa was handled by an unregistered agent: what you are responsible for, getting the file, correcting it, and reporting

MARN 1576536

Who may give immigration assistance

The Migration Act defines immigration assistance as using knowledge of or experience in migration procedure to assist a person with a visa application, a sponsorship, a review application or representations to the Minister, by advising, preparing or helping to prepare the application, or representing the person. It provides that only a registered migration agent, an Australian legal practitioner, or a person in an exempt category may give it, and that giving it when not entitled is an offence, with a penalty of up to ten years' imprisonment where the assistance is given for a fee or other reward. The exempt categories are narrow: a parliamentarian or their staff, a public servant in the course of duty, a close family member or a nominator or sponsor acting without reward, and a few others. Everyone else who helped with your visa was either registered, a lawyer, or breaking the law, and the register at the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority tells you which. The choosing-an-agent guide explains how to check.

Education agents

An education agent is engaged by an Australian institution to recruit students, and may advise on courses, assist with enrolment, and give the student the Department's published information and forms; the line is that they may not advise on the visa, assess the student's prospects, prepare the application or the genuine student statement, or lodge it. Many do, because the student expects it and the institution's commission depends on the enrolment, and the student visa applications prepared by education agents are a large share of those with false information in them: fabricated financial documents, invented employment, statements written by the agent in the student's name. The student who signed the declaration owns all of it. The Department and the institutions have tightened the rules on education agents in recent years, and a student whose education agent handled the visa is in the position this page describes.

What you are responsible for

The application carries your declaration that the information is complete, correct and up to date, and the Act makes you responsible for it whoever typed it. Public Interest Criterion 4020 refuses an application in which false or misleading information or a bogus document has been given, in that application or in one made in the previous twelve months, and bars most further visas for three years, with ten years for identity fraud; it has no element of knowledge, and the Tribunal has held in case after case that an applicant who authorised an agent to act is bound by what the agent lodged. A waiver exists for compelling or compassionate circumstances, and the applicant's innocence is relevant to it, but a waiver is a discretion against a refusal, not a defence. The same applies to a sponsor whose application was prepared by an unregistered person. The practical consequence is that the applicant's protection is knowledge: knowing what was lodged, and correcting it before it is relied on. The PIC 4020 guide sets out the criterion and the waiver.

Finding out what was lodged

An application lodged in the applicant's own ImmiAccount is visible there in full, with every answer and every attachment, and the applicant reads it. An application lodged in the agent's account, which unregistered agents prefer because it keeps the client dependent, is not visible to the applicant, and the agent may refuse to provide it or provide a version that differs from what was lodged. The reliable route is a request to the Department under the Freedom of Information Act for the applicant's own file, which produces the application as lodged, the attachments, the Department's notes and the correspondence; it is free for personal information and takes about a month. A registered agent appointed in the meantime can ask the Department to link the application to the applicant's or the new agent's account and can see the correspondence from then on. The transaction reference number, which the agent should have given you and which the Department can confirm from your passport details, identifies the application.

Revoking the agent and appointing a registered one

An unregistered agent should never have been recorded as the applicant's authorised recipient or representative, and often was not, with the agent using the applicant's identity to deal with the Department. The applicant notifies the Department in writing that the person is not authorised to act or receive correspondence, provides their own contact details, and, where a registered agent is engaged, lodges the appointment form so that the Department deals with the registered agent from then on. Correspondence sent to the unregistered agent's address before the notification is taken to have been received by the applicant, which is why the notification is made at once; a notice with a deadline may already be sitting in an inbox the applicant cannot see. The agent-or-lawyer guide covers who to appoint.

Correcting the application before decision

An applicant who finds that the application contains incorrect answers, invented employment, a false financial document or a statement they did not write corrects it before the Department decides, by the notification-of-incorrect-answers form, with the correct information and a statement of how the error came about and who made it. A correction made voluntarily, before the Department has identified the problem, is the applicant's best position: the Department can still apply PIC 4020 to a bogus document, but a corrected application with an honest account of an agent's fraud, supported by evidence of the agent's conduct, is one in which the waiver is realistic and the Department often does not pursue the criterion at all. A correction made after the Department's request for comment is weaker, and a correction never made, with the error found at decision, is a refusal and a bar. The correction guide covers the form.

If the application was already refused

A refusal is reviewable at the Tribunal within the period on the letter, if the letter reached the applicant, and a refusal notice sent to an unregistered agent who did not pass it on is the commonest way the period is missed; the period runs from deemed receipt, and the Tribunal cannot extend it, though a notification that was not properly made can sometimes be challenged. At review, the agent's conduct is evidence, and an applicant who can show that the false information was the agent's and that they have since corrected it is in a better position than one who cannot. A refusal under PIC 4020 brings the three-year bar unless waived, and the waiver application is where the agent's fraud is argued. A fresh application declares the refusal and the circumstances, and is read against them. The refusal guide covers review and reapplication.

Reporting

• To the Department. Unregistered practice is reported through the Department's Border Watch reporting channel, with the person's name, business, contact details, the fees paid and the documents; the Department and the Australian Border Force investigate and prosecute, and the report is also evidence in the applicant's own matter.
• To the police, where money was taken on a false promise, documents were forged, or identity was misused, as fraud.
• To the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority, if the person claimed to be registered or was once registered, which checks the register and acts on impersonation.
• To the state's fair trading office, for the consumer-law side and the fee recovery.
• To the institution, where an education agent was involved, which is required to act on an agent's misconduct and may terminate the agency.

Reporting does not harm the applicant's own application; an applicant who reports the agent and corrects the file has done what the Department expects.

Recovering the fees

Money paid to an unregistered agent for immigration assistance was paid for a service that was unlawful to provide, and is recoverable in principle as a debt or under the consumer guarantees, through a letter of demand and then the small claims division of the state civil tribunal, which is cheap and does not need a lawyer. A written agreement, receipts, bank transfers and messages are the evidence; cash paid without a receipt is harder. An agent who has left Australia or closed the business is usually beyond practical recovery, and the applicant decides whether the amount justifies the effort. The visa application charge paid to the Department is not refunded on this ground. The fees are the last item on the list, after the file and the correction, because they are the only one that can wait.

Checking an agent before you pay

1. Ask for the Migration Agent Registration Number and look it up on the OMARA register, which shows the name, the business and whether the registration is current.
2. If the person says they are a lawyer, check the state law society's register.
3. Insist that the application is lodged in your own ImmiAccount, or that you are given full access, and that you see every page before it is submitted.
4. Read the statements written in your name before you declare them true.
5. Get the agreement and the fees in writing, which a registered agent is required to provide under the Code of Conduct.

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General information only, current at October 2026; not advice on your own case. Part 3 of the Migration Act 1958 (immigration assistance, registration and the offences in sections 280 and 281), Public Interest Criterion 4020 in Schedule 4 to the Migration Regulations 1994, the Freedom of Information Act 1982, and the Australian Consumer Law, as in force at the date above. Consumer-law recovery and criminal complaints are matters for the state tribunals and the police; WIDEN advises on the migration side. Outcomes depend on the Department’s assessment of each application; no registered migration agent can guarantee a result (Code of Conduct, Migration Agents Regulations). Keshab Chapagain, MARN 1576536.