Form 956 and 956A: Appointing a Migration Representative

What is Form 956 and what does it do?

Form 956 Appointment of a registered migration agent, legal practitioner or exempt person is the form that tells the Department of Home Affairs you have appointed someone to act for you on a migration matter. Until that form reaches the Department, the Department deals with you directly, whatever arrangement you have made privately with an adviser. The private retainer and the departmental record are two different things, and only the second one changes how your file is handled.

The form does two separate jobs, and the distance between them is the source of most of the confusion around it. The first job is to record the appointment of a person to give you immigration assistance. The second job, at Question 17, is to record whether that same person is also authorised to receive the Department's written communication about the matter on your behalf. These are different appointments with different legal consequences. The second does not follow automatically from the first, and Question 17 has to be answered for it to happen at all.

Part A of the form is used for a new appointment. Part B is used where an appointment has ended, including the withdrawal of an authorised recipient. Part C contains the declarations. Both the representative and the client sign Part C, and each ticks the declarations that apply to them. A form signed by the representative alone does not record a valid appointment, because the client's declaration at Question 24 is what confirms that the client appointed that person and authorised what the form says.

A separate Form 956 must be completed for each matter. A person with a partner visa application on foot and a separate bridging visa matter needs a form for each of them. Everyone listed on a single form is treated as having appointed the same representative, which is how dependent applicants in one application are covered without a form each. If a second application is lodged later, it needs its own form, and the Department will not carry the earlier appointment across.

Question 15 records what the appointment covers, and the options are an application process, a cancellation process, or a specific matter. The specific matter box is the one most often left blank when it should be used. It is the box for sponsorship monitoring and sanction activity, for one stage only of a two stage visa, and for a request for ministerial intervention. An appointment described too narrowly, or described as an application process when the live issue is a cancellation, creates an argument about scope at the worst possible time.

The current version carries the design date 08/22, printed at the foot of each page. The Department replaces its forms without notice and does not accept superseded versions, so the form should be downloaded fresh from the departmental website for each matter rather than reused from an old file.

My Migration Lawyers is appointed on Form 956 in every matter the firm acts in, in partner visa work and in protection visa work alike, and in almost every matter is appointed as authorised recipient at the same time. The form is prepared by the firm, sent to the client for signature, and lodged before any substantive work goes to the Department.

What is the difference between Form 956 and Form 956A?

Form 956 appoints a person to give you immigration assistance. Form 956A Appointment or withdrawal of an authorised recipient appoints a person only to receive documents from the Department on your behalf, and that person must not give you immigration assistance unless they are separately entitled to do so.

That is the whole distinction, and it decides which form you need. If the person you are appointing is going to advise you, prepare your application, or make submissions for you, the form is Form 956. If the person is only a postbox, the form is Form 956A. The Department says so on the form itself. Form 956A is not to be used where you are appointing a registered migration agent, an Australian legal practitioner or an exempt person who will also be your authorised recipient. In that situation Form 956 does both jobs, and a second form is unnecessary.

Form 956A exists for a narrower set of situations than most people assume. It is for the applicant who has no representative but who needs the Department's letters to arrive somewhere reliable: at a family member's address, at an address they actually check, or with someone who can read English and tell them a letter has come. The person appointed on Form 956A does not have to be a migration agent or a lawyer, and does not need any qualification at all.

The mistake made most often is lodging Form 956A for a lawyer or a registered migration agent. The result is a representative who receives the correspondence but is not on the record as acting, and who therefore cannot make submissions on the file. There is a further risk in it. Section 494D of the Migration Act 1958 allows the Minister to decline to give documents to an authorised recipient where that recipient is not a registered migration agent and the Minister reasonably suspects the recipient is giving immigration assistance. An adviser who is on the file as a postbox but behaves as an adviser is exposed to exactly that provision.

Form 956A is also the form used to withdraw an authorised recipient, and a client may do that in writing instead if they prefer. The Department accepts a plain written notice for a withdrawal. It does not accept a plain written notice as a substitute for Form 956 when appointing a representative.

Who can be appointed on Form 956?

Only three categories of person can be appointed on Form 956: a registered migration agent, an Australian legal practitioner, and an exempt person. Nobody else can be appointed, and the form cannot be used to put anybody else on the record.

A registered migration agent is a person registered with the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority. Registration produces a Migration Agent Registration Number, and that number goes on the form. An Australian legal practitioner is a lawyer who holds a current practising certificate granted under the law of an Australian State or Territory. The Legal Practitioner Number goes on the form in place of a Migration Agent Registration Number.

An exempt person is a person the Migration Act allows to give immigration assistance without registration. The categories are a close family member of a visa applicant, meaning a spouse, child, adopted child, parent, brother or sister; a sponsor or nominator of the applicant; a member of parliament or a member of their staff; an official appointed or engaged under the Public Service Act 1999, or a member of a State or Territory public service, giving immigration assistance as part of their duties; and a member of a diplomatic mission, a consular post or an office of an international organisation.

The restriction behind all of this is section 280 of the Migration Act. Section 280(1) provides that a person who is not a registered migration agent must not give immigration assistance, and section 280(1A) makes that offence one of strict liability, which means the prosecution does not have to prove that the person intended to break the rule. The exceptions are set out in the rest of the section. Section 280(3) excepts an Australian legal practitioner giving immigration assistance in connection with legal practice. The remaining subsections cover parliamentarians, officials, close family members, sponsors, nominators and diplomatic and consular staff.

The exemption for a family member, a sponsor or a nominator carries a hard condition attached to it. An exempt person must not charge a fee or other reward for the assistance. Section 281 of the Migration Act makes it an offence for a person who is not a registered migration agent to ask for or receive a fee or other reward for giving immigration assistance, and the penalty is imprisonment for 10 years. The exception in section 281(3) covers an Australian legal practitioner charging for immigration assistance given in connection with legal practice. It does not cover an uncle who charges his nephew for filling in a visa application. This is the provision behind the warning printed on the face of Form 956, and it is not decorative.

Why your lawyer does not have a migration agent number

Since 22 March 2021 an Australian legal practitioner who holds an unrestricted practising certificate cannot be registered as a migration agent, and does not need to be. That change came from the Migration Amendment (Regulation of Migration Agents) Act 2020, which commenced on that date and required the Authority to cancel the registration of practitioners already registered.

The same Act repealed section 277 of the Migration Act, which had drawn a separate category of immigration legal assistance. That distinction no longer exists. The Act now works through the single idea of an Australian legal practitioner giving immigration assistance in connection with legal practice, permitted by section 280(3) and chargeable under section 281(3). Content written before 2021 that still describes lawyers as needing registration, or that leans on section 277, is describing a scheme that was dismantled five years ago.

Lawyers holding a restricted practising certificate were given a transitional period. A restricted practitioner could remain registered for an eligible period of two years, which for practitioners already holding a restricted certificate at commencement ran from 22 March 2021 to 22 March 2023, with one extension available on application. That window has closed.

The practical consequence matters when you are checking who you are dealing with. A prospective client who searches the register of migration agents for their solicitor's name and finds nothing has not found a problem. They have found the ordinary position. A lawyer is verified through the legal profession regulator in the State or Territory that granted the practising certificate, and through the Legal Practitioner Number written on Form 956, not through the migration agent register.

What is an authorised recipient, and what changes when you appoint one?

An authorised recipient is a person you have authorised in writing to receive the Department's documents for you, and appointing one changes who the Department writes to and, critically, when you are treated as having been told something.

The provision is section 494D of the Migration Act. Section 494D(1) operates where a person gives the Minister written notice of the name and address of another person authorised to receive documents in connection with matters arising under the Act. Section 494D(2) then provides that if the Minister gives a document to the authorised recipient, the Minister is taken to have given that document to the applicant. Question 17 on Form 956 is the written notice for that purpose, and the client's declaration in Part C is what gives it effect.

Three consequences follow, and each of them is worth understanding before signing.

The first is that the correspondence stops coming to you and starts going to your representative. Requests for further information, invitations to comment, interview invitations and the decision record all go to the representative's address. This is the point of the appointment. The single most common way a winnable application is lost is a letter sent to an email address the applicant stopped checking, followed by a deadline that runs out while nobody is watching.

The second is that you are taken to have received the document. The Migration Act sets the day on which a person is taken to have received a document given by a method in the Act, and the period for responding, and the period for applying for review of a refusal, run from that day. They do not run from the day you personally read it. An applicant who never saw a letter because it went to their representative is in exactly the same position as an applicant who read it on the day it was sent. That is why the choice of authorised recipient is a serious one and why an address that is not monitored daily is a poor choice.

The third is that you may have only one authorised recipient for a matter at a time. Section 494D(3) allows the applicant, and only the applicant, to vary or withdraw the notice at any time, and does not permit more than one authorised recipient in relation to the same matter. Where a later appointment is made, the Department sends documents to the most recently appointed recipient. Appointing a new representative therefore displaces the old one automatically, which is a point often misunderstood by applicants who think they must first obtain their previous adviser's agreement.

Section 494D(5) allows the Minister not to comply with the arrangement where the authorised recipient is not a registered migration agent, the Minister reasonably suspects that the recipient is giving immigration assistance, and the Minister has given the applicant notice. It is the Department's answer to unregistered advisers operating behind a postbox appointment.

What counts as immigration assistance?

Immigration assistance is defined in section 276 of the Migration Act, and it is much wider than lodging an application. A person gives immigration assistance if they use, or claim to use, their knowledge of or experience in migration procedure to assist a visa applicant or a cancellation review applicant by preparing or helping to prepare the application or document, by advising on it, by preparing for proceedings before a court or review authority, or by representing the person in those proceedings. Section 276(2) extends the same idea to assisting a sponsor or a nominator, and sections 276(2A) and 276(2B) extend it to requests for ministerial intervention and to representations about revoking a refusal or cancellation.

Section 276(3) sets out what is not immigration assistance, and every limb of it turns on the word merely. A person does not give immigration assistance if they merely do clerical work to prepare or help prepare an application or other document, merely provide translation or interpretation services to help prepare it, merely advise another person that they must apply for a visa, or merely pass on information produced by a third person without giving substantial comment on it or explanation of it.

That word is where a great many people get into trouble. A friend who types the answers you dictate into the online form is doing clerical work and is outside the definition. The same friend who tells you which answer to give, or explains what the Department is looking for, or decides what to leave out, has crossed into immigration assistance and needs to be registered, a lawyer, or exempt. A translator who renders your statement into English is outside it. A translator who tells you which parts of your account to emphasise is not.

The distinction matters to applicants in a concrete way. Assistance given by a person who was not entitled to give it is not void, but it is frequently poor, and it is given by somebody with no professional indemnity insurance, no complaints body and no obligation to keep your file. When that assistance produces an answer on a form that turns out to be wrong, the applicant is the person who carries it.

How is Form 956 lodged, and how is an appointment ended?

Form 956 is completed, signed by both the representative and the client, and then given to the Department in connection with the matter it relates to. For an application made online, that ordinarily means attaching the signed form to the application in the departmental online system, which is why an applicant who has lodged their own application will usually be asked for access or for the reference numbers before anything else happens.

Question 16 asks for at least one of the departmental reference numbers where they are known: the client identifier, the Request ID or the Transaction Reference Number. A form lodged without any of them can still be processed, but it is far more likely to be matched to the wrong file or to sit unactioned, and the delay falls on the applicant rather than on the Department.

Ending an appointment is done through Part B. Part B identifies the representative whose appointment has ended, asks whether that person was also the client's authorised recipient, and asks whether the client is ending the authorised recipient appointment as well. Those are two separate questions, because the two appointments are separate. It is possible to end a representative's appointment and leave them as the authorised recipient, and it is possible to do the reverse, and neither is usually what the client intends.

Where an appointment has ended, Question 20 collects the client's own details, and the client declares that they understand future correspondence will be sent to the address given there. This is the step that goes wrong most often when a client changes advisers. The old appointment is ended, the new one is not yet on the record, and correspondence goes to an address the client gave months earlier and no longer uses. The safer sequence is to lodge the new appointment at the same time as ending the old one, so there is no window in which the Department is writing to nobody in particular.

A representative may also notify the Department in writing that their appointment has ended, and a client may notify the withdrawal of an authorised recipient in writing or on Form 956A. A written notice is accepted for ending or withdrawing. It is not accepted in place of Form 956 for making an appointment.

Does Form 956 apply to an Administrative Review Tribunal review?

No. Form 956 is a Department of Home Affairs form and it has no effect at the Administrative Review Tribunal. A representative appointed to act on a visa application is not on the record at the Tribunal merely because a refusal has been reviewed, and the Tribunal will not treat the departmental appointment as notice to it.

Representation before the Tribunal is governed by section 66 of the Administrative Review Tribunal Act 2024, which allows a party to be represented and allows the Tribunal to refuse to permit a particular representative in defined circumstances, including a conflict of interest. The Tribunal's authorised recipient provision for migration and protection reviews is section 379G of the Migration Act, which sits in Part 5 of that Act. Since the Tribunal replaced its predecessor, protection reviews and migration reviews are both dealt with under Part 5, and the former Part 7 no longer exists.

In practice a party appoints a representative and an authorised recipient using the Tribunal's own Appointment of Representative and Appointment of Authorised Recipient form. The Tribunal's practice direction for migration, protection and character matters puts the obligation squarely on the applicant and the representative to make sure the Tribunal knows who is acting at all times, requires written notice as soon as possible when representation begins or ends, and requires the notice ending representation to state the date the cessation took effect. Only one person may be nominated as an authorised recipient.

The consequence of getting this wrong is severe and it is entirely avoidable. Review periods are short and are applied strictly, and the Tribunal writes to the address it holds. An applicant who assumes their migration lawyer is on the Tribunal file because that lawyer lodged the visa application can miss a hearing invitation. Anyone who has received a refusal should read what happens next after a visa refusal before doing anything else, because the review application itself comes first and the paperwork about representation can follow it.

How My Migration Lawyers is appointed on a matter

The firm prepares the form, the client signs it, and the firm lodges it before any substantive work goes to the Department. No submission, no request for an extension and no correspondence is sent on a client's behalf until the appointment is on the record, because until that point the Department is not obliged to deal with the firm at all.

The form is prepared using the details already held on the client's file. My Migration Lawyers does not ask a client to complete Form 956 themselves and does not ask a client to supply documents the firm can obtain or already holds. The firm confirms a client's visa status and immigration history from departmental records rather than asking the client to locate old grant notices.

In almost every matter the firm is appointed as authorised recipient at the same time. That is a deliberate choice and the client is told what it means before signing. From that point the Department's letters come to the firm, the response period is recorded on the day the document arrives, and the client is told what has been received and what is required. It removes the failure that causes more refusals than any single legal argument, which is a letter nobody opened.

Where the firm takes over from a previous representative, Part B of the new form records that the earlier appointment has ended and that the earlier authorised recipient appointment is withdrawn. A client does not need the previous adviser's consent to change representatives, and does not need to explain why. Where a matter also involves a cancellation, the firm lodges a separate form for that matter, because the appointment does not stretch across two processes. Cancellation matters carry their own deadlines, which are set out on the firm's page on visa cancellations.

All work is supervised by Weiwei Zhang, Principal Lawyer at My Migration Lawyers. Every letter of advice and every submission to the Department is settled by her, and every client statement remains the client's own evidence, prepared from what the client has said, read back to the client and corrected by them before it is signed.

Anyone who is unsure whether they need Form 956 or Form 956A, or who has an adviser they are not certain is entitled to act, can request a consultation with the firm. It is a question worth settling before an application is lodged rather than after a decision arrives.