'Front agents' at centre of latest unlawful migration crackdown

Australia's migration agent watchdog has vowed to remove "fake agents" from the profession following multiple cases of unlawful immigration assistance.

The Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority (OMARA) has sanctioned three registered migration agents in what the government described as an "ongoing crackdown".

Julian Hill, the assistant minister for citizenship, customs and multicultural affairs, said the government is strengthening immigration oversight.

"When people pay a migration agent they rightly expect a qualified person will do the work, not an untrained, unregistered fake agent," he said in a government statement on Tuesday.

"No one would put up with people borrowing registration numbers from doctors, lawyers or financial planners and neither should they when hiring a registered migration agent."

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OMARA's monitoring team was established in October and "proactively monitored" 85 registered migration agents during 2025-26, identifying 43 instances of non-compliance and addressing them through education, engagement and regulatory action, according to the government statement.

"Alongside the Investigations team, which examines allegations of serious misconduct, OMARA sanctioned 28 registered migration agents in 2025-26," it added.

In three separate cases, registered migration agents permitted unregistered individuals to provide migration assistance under the agents' Migration Agent Registration Numbers (MARNs), a practice commonly referred to as "front agent" activity.

In the first case, an agent’s registration was cancelled after OMARA determined that hundreds of visa applications submitted through three business ImmiAccounts involved either undisclosed immigration assistance or assistance provided by staff who were not registered migration agents.

ImmiAccount is the Department of Home Affairs' online portal for lodging and managing visa and citizenship applications.

In the second case, an agent was suspended after acknowledging that his son, who was not a registered migration agent, had provided immigration assistance on the business's behalf.

The investigation also uncovered allegations that clients had received falsified departmental correspondence intended to give the impression that visa applications had been lodged when they had not.

In the third matter, an agent was suspended after knowingly permitting another business director to lodge visa applications using the agent’s MARN while the director worked towards becoming a registered migration agent.