In the past month I’ve had many readers send me personal thank you emails for writing the book. They all have invariably spent months online researching and gathering bits and pieces of information regarding partner visas until they came across my book.

But they’re not the only ones that have come across my book. It seems I’ve made a bit of a splash by writing the book. My attempt to help couples migrate to Australia and save thousands of dollars has not gone unnoticed.  

My dear readers, my book lays it out so well in such an easy to follow guide that even migration agents are buying it. Maybe they want to add partner visas to their services; maybe they just want to check out the competition or maybe; just maybe, they are genuine readers who want to bring their partners to Australia.

Either way you look at it, you know you’re doing something right when migration agents are buying your book.

These guys must want to know who or what is eating into their profits significantly, because for every person who buys and reads my book means one less customer that a migration agent can take money from.

But to be clear, I do not in any way advocate that migration agents should not be used. If your case is not standard or that there are complications I always always always recommend that you talk to an immigration lawyer. See what I did there? I’ve written about the differences in the Q&A that I did in June so please have a read about the pros and cons of an immigration lawyer vs. a migration agent.

That being said, here’s a tip for identifying an experienced migration agent. It’s a simple trick and probably a bit too simplistic but when you’re faced with two or more competing offers from migration agents, how do you decide?

Look at their migration agent registration number.

If you’re going to compare, choose the one that has the lower number – it means they’ve been a migration agent longer and should logically have more experience.

Migration agent numbers starting with 0’s (zero) are for agents who were there almost at the beginning of time i.e. inception of the registration scheme. Anything starting with a 1 and the higher the number means more recent the registration.

The more recent the registration means the more recent that they did the one-year course and whilst you could argue that they’ve got more up to date theory, they have little or no practice.

But as I’ve said, it’s not the most perfect way to decide but it is a good indicator of experience, although not without its flaws and errors. For instances, an immigration lawyer could have a high migration agent number because they’ve only recently registered as a migration agent. This doesn’t mean that they haven’t been practising immigration law for a long time. It just means that they paid to get a license that most people seem to be familiar with. It’s a strange dual registration scheme but I won’t go into the details of that as it’s more administrative and political than anything.

In short, immigration lawyers are lawyers who practice immigration law.

Migration agents are people who have undergone a one-year immigration law course and are then licensed to provide immigration advice.

Immigration lawyers can be migration agents but migration agents cannot be immigration lawyers unless they go to law school.

So that wraps it up for this post. Remember; always seek advice from the appropriate professional before proceeding.