According to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP), the practice of obtaining visa labels often resulted in unnecessary expenses, delays and inconvenience for clients and stakeholders.
‘Offering these services digitally is an efficient, economical and sustainable solution. The step is part of a department wide strategy to provide accessible and efficient digital services to clients in line with the Australian government’s digital agenda,’ said a DIBP spokesman.
‘The department has always been keen to embrace new technologies and already issues and records all visas electronically,’ the spokesman added.
The technology now being used provides real time visa information to registered organisations and other appropriate stakeholders as well as visa holders themselves through the free Visa Entitlement Verification Online service or the myVEVO mobile app.
Visa holders can also provide evidence that they have the authority to enter and remain in Australia by simply showing their passport or ImmiCard linked to their electronic visa record through an unique identification number.
So from 1 September, visa holders will no longer be able to request and pay for a visa label and will need to access their visa record through the VEVO system.