Pollyanna & Jayne
I think Jayne needs a good solicitor, fast, quite honestly. If this sort of mess happened to me, I would go straight to David Bitel at Parish Patience in Sydney, howling, "Please help!" He is a solicitor and the boss of his firm.
If some mutt of an agent has led Jayne up the garden path and encouragedadvised her to lie, then I suspect that there is a good chance that DIMIA could be persuaded to accept that what has happened is not Jayne's own fault.
No doubt it would cause serious stuff-ups and delays, but honesty always wins out in the end, in my experience. DIMIA are not some sort of Big Bad Wolf. They are merely a Government Agency - ie the Civil Service. As long as they realise that Jayne - in the utmost good faith - took what she was buttured was sound, competent, professional advice, I reckon DIMIA would be very sympathetic and would help her to sort out this mess.
The Agent seems to be the culprit in this one, for giving this poor lady irresponsible, crazy and dangerously bad advice.
I suggest that the first step is not to panic, and to get a good Australian solicitor on board. You will not find one Migration Agent suing another on anyone's behalf, because unless he or she is also a good solicitor, he or she simply wouldn't have enough expertise to attempt it, which is why Litigation lawyers are required here, which David Bitel is.
In Jayne's shoes, the next thing I would find out is whether or not she is using a registered Agent, via contacting their professional body. If the Agent is not registered but has been misrepresenting his or her own status, that is unlawful in Australia, and the UK Court would not walk away from it either. The Court here cannot enforce Australian local Law for the heck of it, but it can and most definitely would judge this Agent under the UK Supply of Goods and Services Act (which basically says that if you hold yourself out as an expert, then you had better BE one - or else.) If the Agent is registered, then it is up to his-her governing body to help Jayne out of this mess.
This poor girl is plainly panicking, having suddenly realised that she has gotten herself into a god-awful scrape through no fault of her own, and I am certain that the DIMIA 'spies' who you claim infest this website - which is the short cut to arranging for everyone else to dump British Expats completely in a very big hurry - would not be half so alarmist and hysterical as you are being about this, Pollyanna my dear. If you don't want to frighten poor Jayne and everyone else out of her & their wits, why on earth did you reply to her publicly, plus give these DIMIA 'spies' the idea that BritishExpats is some sort of underhanded, subversive organisation, as well? If I thought it was anything of the sort, you wouldn't catch me anywhere near this outfit that you claim to "moderate" because I have more faith in my own judgement than I have in yours, bluntly.
Yours is a hysterical, idiotic reaction in my view. Jayne is clearly telling us the truth. OK. She has made a mistake, but it was a reasonable mistake to have made, because she made it on what she reasonably believed to be competent, professional advice. It IS a mess, for sure, but a mess CAN be sorted out. However, that cannot be done by trying to drive the mess underground, which would only make it a million times worse.
So my recommendation is that everyone should stop leaping around like a bunch of headless chickens and instead focus on what the rest of us can do by way of CALM, PRACTICAL suggestions about how to help Jayne.
Grrrr
Gill
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