Privacy Policy

At Tamas Immigration, we endeavour to provide quality immigration advice, visa assistance, and legal services that meet your individual needs.

In order to assist with your matter, we may need to collect some personal information from you as well as information about your circumstances and facts regarding your immigration matter, visa application, or legal issue.

What is personal information?

Personal information can be details about your identity, nationality, address, visa status and visa history, financial situation, family circumstances, employment, education, health, or character. This information will enable us to better understand your position so that we may advise you appropriately with regard to your immigration, visa, or legal matter and provide quality assistance.

We place priority on ensuring that you are comfortable with providing us with requested information, and any personal information you provide to us will be treated in an appropriate manner with required privacy and confidentiality.

Examples of personal information may include the following:

• Your name.
• Date of birth.
• Address / contact details.
• Workplace / employment details.
• Business information.
• Financial information.
• Passport.
• Driver licence.

How personal information is collected

Personal information may be collected from you throughout the course of our relationship when you give it to us.

You might provide your personal information during consultations, meetings or phone calls, or via emails or social media. Personal information may also be provided by completing questionnaires or by filling out forms that we send to you, or make available on our website such as enquiry, sign-up or intake forms.

From time to time, we may also collect information from the person who referred you, your employer, referees, or other people, organisations, and government bodies.

We will endeavour to collect your personal information directly from you where possible. However, if we cannot do so, we will try to obtain your consent before collecting any information about you from outside sources.

Whereas we intend to seek your consent to collect or disclose your personal information, there may be times when your consent is implied. For example, where we are authorised to act on your behalf, where you ask for our advice or assistance, or if we are preparing an application for you.

Regardless of how personal information is provided or obtained, we will do our outmost to keep the information safe and secure.

Who would your personal information be disclosed to?

There can be situations where Tamas Immigration may need to disclose your personal information, for example in furtherance of a legal matter, in relation to an application for a visa or a visa related application, or in support of an argument or claim.

We will endeavour to obtain your consent prior to disclosing your personal information, though in certain circumstances your consent to disclosure may be implied.

Unless you consent to disclosure of your personal information, we will not disclose the information to parties outside the firm.

Your consent to disclosure of personal information can be either express, or implied from your conduct such as where you require our advice, or if you ask us to assist with an application or act on your behalf in a matter.

Some examples of persons, organisations, or government bodies to whom your personal information may be disclosed, where your consent is expressly or impliedly given, include the following:

• Government departments or authorities who need to be liaised with in respect of your matter.
• Government departments or authorities in the course of an application, for example a visa application, a citizenship application, or an application to verify visa status.
• Barristers who are briefed to act on your behalf in a matter.
• Experts who may be asked to provide an expert report with respect to your matter.
• Insurance companies to ascertain policy details.
• Recipients of Court documents as required in the course of proceedings.
• Where we are obliged to do so by law, such as for example by way of subpoena.

We may contact you from time to time to confirm your personal information to ensure that all your details are accurate and up to date.

It is important that the personal information we have on file for you is accurate at all times during the course of our professional relationship. If the personal information you provide to us is incomplete or inaccurate, we may not be able to provide you with the services that you are seeking.

Security of personal information

Tamas Immigration will endeavour to handle your personal information in a confidential and professional manner, and will not disclose your information to parties outside of the firm for any purpose other than to advance your legal matter, or visa or visa related matter, or when required to do so by law.

We take reasonable measures to ensure that the information you give to us is secure. These include electronic and physical security measures for safe storage of the information in order to protect it from loss, unauthorised access, misuse, modification, interference or disclosure.

Most of the information we hold for you will be stored electronically and, if so, on computers within our firm or via cloud storage providers. Some information we hold may also be stored in hard copy or paper files.

The policies and management systems we have in place to securely store personal information include electronic and physical security measures, and limited access to the information.

We take information security seriously and implement precautionary measures with a view to ensure information we hold is secure at all times. However, considering that the internet is not completely secure we do not guarantee total security of the information we hold nor the data transmitted on our website.

Whilst we use virus protection software, we do not guarantee that our website is free from viruses or contaminating properties. Similarly, we do not guarantee uninterrupted access to this website, or that there will be no delays, failures, errors, or loss of transmitted information. Transmission is at your own risk.

How long do we keep your personal information?

We will keep your personal information in accordance with our internal retention policies consistent with regulatory, legal, and professional obligations as well as data protection laws.

Generally, after termination of the client retainer, or finalising your matter, we will keep your file for a period of seven years before destroying or deleting it.

How to access your personal information

You can request access to the personal information we hold on file for you at any time. However, reasonable notice may be required so that we can have the information readily accessible for you.

We may charge a fee to retrieve the information on your behalf, and we will endeavour to keep these costs reasonable.

Upon receiving your request to access information, we will attend to it as soon as we can. When you have accessed your information, you may be asked to sign a document confirming that you have accessed the information.

We reserve the right to deny access to any personal information where the information may place the firm in a situation of conflict of interest.

Changes to the privacy policy

We regularly monitor privacy laws and possible changes to the law so as to ensure that our privacy policy is consistent with legal and regulatory requirements as well as industry practice. As a consequence, we may amend or change our privacy policy from time to time.

If you have a question or complaint about our policy

If you have any questions about this privacy notice or the personal information we hold on your behalf, please feel free to contact our office.

If you have a complaint about our privacy policy or conduct regarding your personal information, you may submit a complaint to us either by calling our office or by writing a letter to us addressed to our office as listed at the bottom of this webpage.

We will treat any question or concern seriously and in a confidential manner, and endeavour to deal with it promptly.

If you are still not satisfied with our services or your concerns are not resolved, you may contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

Please note: Tamas Immigration is a firm of Australian Immigration Lawyers and Canadian Immigration Consultants. Accordingly, some reference to laws, or legal requirements, or policy, in this Privacy Policy may only relate to Australian laws, legal requirements, or policy, and the services we provide in our capacity as Australian Immigration Lawyers.