Rohit Pandhi lost thousands of dollars after he paid a dodgy employer Radovan Laski, to get a 457 visa sponsorship. He and many others were promised a "Pathway to PR" which never happened.
Now an investigation by has claimed widespread corruption within the Immigration department because of which dodgy operators like Laski easily get away with fraud.
The report claims that Australian immigration officials are facing investigation in more than a hundred cases of alleged corruption in Australia’s skilled and student visa programs.
Source: SBS Punjabi
In the last 12 months, Australian Border Force chief, Michael Pezzullo has referred 132 cases of suspected corruption in the department to the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity.
Former joint head of the Immigration department’s investigation office, Joseph Petyanszki said the department was ignoring tens of thousands of cases of visa frauds, including thousands of those who succeeded in securing visa through such means that investigators uncovered in Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia.
One investigation identified up to 4,000 applicants who used such documents to apply for skilled migration," Mr. Petyanszki was quoted as saying who is calling for a major overhaul of the fight against migration crime Image
"Numerous investigations [by the department] revealed massive fraud within our Student, Skilled Migration, 457 programs," he said.
"Some investigations revealed thousands of skilled migrant applicants had lodged bogus qualifications from private colleges, funded by the Australian taxpayer, and in some cases excellent counterfeit degrees from our most prestigious Victorian universities.
"One investigation identified up to 4,000 applicants who used such documents to apply for skilled migration," Mr. Petyanszki was quoted as saying who is calling for a major overhaul of the fight against migration crime.
"Australia needs many more officers who are trained to focus and understand fraud and assist decision-making officers in quarantining cases which may involve fraud," he said.
"There are also major integrity problems caused by outsourcing immigration work to migration agents who are largely poorly policed and regulated.
"Immigration laws are also beset with loopholes that can be exploited by unscrupulous migration agents.
"For years, the law, and the system, has favoured the arrive-by-place fraudsters at the expense of the integrity Australia's migration program."
A spokesman of the immigration department said the department has increased the crackdown against immigration fraud in the last 12 months.
He also said that many of the 132 corruption allegations had not been verified and some involved allegations about people who falsely claimed to be Border Force staff.
A whistleblower who has given a sworn testimony to the Immigration Department about his former employer, a multinational construction contractor. He said the company sponsored Irish nationals for jobs that did not exist.
"As a business we were issuing or sponsoring visas for workers as project co-ordinators, project administrators, where that role didn't exist on our site and these people, their actual jobs was as a labourer on the ground," he said.
The company was fined $3,500 and banned from sponsoring any more overseas workers for four years.
Indian community leader Jasvinder Sidhu said he was aware of dozens of cases in which Indian nationals had paid fixers sums of up to $80,000 to get visa sponsorship for jobs that did not exist, or for education courses that the applicant never attended.
Mr Sidhu says the Indian nationals who have paid employers to get sponsorships have been exploited, in some cases, sexually assaulted. But they do not complain to police for fear of losing their visa.
