Privacy

How we handle your information

What this website collects, what happens to your information once you contact us about an immigration matter, and how to see it, correct it or complain about it.

General information, not legal advice. This page sets out how the law generally applies. It does not take account of your circumstances, and you should get advice about your own situation before acting on it. The official sources this page is written from are listed on it; where they differ from anything here, they are the authority.

Last updated: 23 September 2026

Immigration matters run on personal information. To advise you properly we need to know things you would not tell most people: where you have lived, who you are in a relationship with, your health, your finances and sometimes your criminal history. This page explains what happens to all of that.

My Visa Lawyer is an informational website about Australian immigration law. Legal services on this website are provided by Jameson Law. In this policy we, us and our mean that firm. We handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles. We are also bound by the duty of confidentiality a solicitor owes a client, which is stricter than privacy law and is dealt with further down this page.

What this website collects

You can read every page of this site without telling us who you are. Information is collected only when you send an enquiry, or automatically by the server that hosts the site.

The enquiry form is deliberately short. It asks for enough to let us come back to you and work out whether we can help, and no more. Please do not use it to send the detail of your matter and do not attach documents to it. It is a contact form, not a secure way to transfer files.

Exactly four things are asked for: your name, your email address, a message, and a tick to confirm you have read this policy. A phone number is optional and the form says so. There is also a hidden field that people never see and never fill in — automated submissions do, which is how they are discarded, and it records nothing about you. Your message is sent to the firm by email; the website does not keep a copy in its database.

Our web server also keeps standard access logs. These are used to keep the site working and secure and to investigate faults or abuse. They are not used to build a profile of you.

Enquiry form: your name and your email address, which the form requires
Enquiry form: your phone number, which is optional
Enquiry form: your message, which is whatever you choose to tell us
Enquiry form: the tick confirming you have read this policy
Server logs: your IP address, the date and time of each request, the pages requested, the response given, and your browser and device type
Cookies and analytics: any cookie set by this site, and any measurement data collected by an analytics service the site uses

If you would rather not use the form at all, call or email instead. The details are at the foot of this page. You can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and this site will still work.

Why we collect it

Each reason is practical, and we collect for one at a time.

To answer your enquiry and tell you whether we can help
To run a conflict check before we act, which means checking whether the firm already acts for someone whose interests are opposed to yours
To advise you, and to prepare, lodge and follow up an application, a review or a request on your instructions
To meet the obligations a law practice has under the Legal Profession Uniform Law, including costs disclosure, billing and keeping proper records
To keep this website available and secure

If you do not engage us we still keep a record of your enquiry, so that a later conflict check picks it up. That is how you stay protected, not how you end up on a list. Making an enquiry does not put you on a marketing list.

Immigration matters involve sensitive information

Sensitive information is a category the Privacy Act treats more carefully than ordinary personal information. Immigration matters touch most of it.

Sensitive information can generally be collected only with your consent and only where it is reasonably necessary for what we are doing. We ask for it when the visa, the decision or the review actually requires it, we tell you why at the time, and we do not ask for more than the application needs.

Please do not send sensitive information through the enquiry form. Wait until we have confirmed that we can act and have told you how to send documents to us.

Health information, including the results of an immigration medical examination
Criminal record, including police certificates and anything relevant to the character test
Racial or ethnic origin, and the identity documents that establish nationality
Religious or philosophical beliefs, where those are part of a claim or of a relationship
Sexual orientation, which is often directly in issue in a partner visa
Biometric information, where it has been collected

We will tell you what your particular visa or review requires before you gather anything. You do not need to send us medical results or police certificates before we have asked for them.

Who we give it to

The Department of Home Affairs is the main recipient, and that is unavoidable. An application is a disclosure: everything lodged in support of it goes to the Department, which assesses it under the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) and handles it under its own privacy notice. If you engage us, we also tell the Department that we act for you, on its Form 956.

If a decision is taken to merits review, the material goes to the Administrative Review Tribunal, which has its own rules about the information it holds and what it publishes.

Everyone else receives your information only on your instructions or where the law requires it.

We do not sell personal information. We do not give it to data brokers and we do not pass it to other businesses for their marketing.

A sponsor, nominator or employer who is part of the same application, where you have asked us to deal with them
Counsel we brief, and a court or tribunal where proceedings are on foot
Translators and accredited translation services, where a document is not in English
The firm's insurer and auditors, where the law or the policy requires it
The technology and document storage providers that host the systems your file sits in

Where a disclosure is required by an Australian law or by a court or tribunal order we may have to make it without your instructions. If that happens and we are permitted to tell you, we will.

How it is stored and kept secure

We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from misuse, interference and loss, and from unauthorised access, modification or disclosure. In practice that means access controls on the systems holding client files, limiting access to the people working on your matter, and secure destruction of material that is no longer needed.

A law practice keeps client files for a period after a matter ends, because obligations to produce them can outlive the matter. Your immigration file may also be relevant to a later application, so keeping it is usually in your interest as well as ours.

If a data breach occurs that is likely to result in serious harm, the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme in the Privacy Act requires notification to the people affected and to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. We would also tell you plainly what had happened and what you should do about it.

If you want to know what we still hold from a matter that has finished, you can ask. See Seeing your information, and correcting it below.

Information sent or held overseas

Two different situations can take your information outside Australia.

The first is your own matter. If you are applying from outside Australia, if a document has to be obtained from another country, or if your application is processed at an overseas post, then information goes overseas because the application requires it. The Department’s privacy notice sets out the disclosures it makes, including to overseas entities, and you should read it as well as this page.

The second is the technology we use. Email, document storage and practice management systems are often provided by companies that store or back up data outside Australia. Before personal information is disclosed to an overseas recipient, the Australian Privacy Principles require reasonable steps to be taken to ensure the recipient does not breach those principles, which is normally done through the contract with the provider.

If you would prefer that a particular document is not sent overseas, tell us. We cannot change what an application itself requires, but we can explain what a disclosure involves before it is made.

Seeing your information, and correcting it

You can ask for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, and you can ask us to correct it if it is wrong, out of date, incomplete or misleading. Ask in writing using the details below, and tell us what you are after. A whole file, or a particular document, is much easier to find than ‘everything’.

There is no charge for making a request. If a request is large enough that gathering it involves real work, we will tell you what the charge will be before we start, and it will not be more than a reasonable cost of doing it. We will respond within a reasonable period; the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner treats 30 days as reasonable.

Access can be refused only on the limited grounds set out in the Australian Privacy Principles. The ones most likely to come up here are these.

Giving access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of another person
The information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings between you and us, and would not be available through discovery
Giving access would be unlawful, or refusing access is required or authorised by an Australian law or by a court or tribunal order
Giving access would pose a serious threat to the life, health or safety of any person

An immigration file often contains information about other people — a sponsor, a former partner, a family member — so a file is not always released in full. If we refuse access, or refuse to make a correction, we will tell you why in writing and how to complain about it. If we do not agree that something is wrong, you can ask us to attach a statement to the record saying that you disagree.

Confidentiality and legal professional privilege

Privacy law is not the strongest protection your information has here. Two others sit above it.

The first is confidentiality. A solicitor must not disclose a client’s confidential information, and that duty continues after your matter has finished and after the file is closed.

The second is client legal privilege, usually called legal professional privilege. Confidential communications between you and us made for the dominant purpose of giving you legal advice, or for use in litigation, are privileged. The privilege belongs to you rather than to us, and it generally means the communication cannot be compelled out of us.

Privilege can be lost by sharing. If you forward our advice to an employer, a sponsor, a family member or an agent, you may waive privilege in it. Ask us before you send it on if you are not sure.

Nothing in this policy reduces that privilege, and a request made under privacy law is not a route by which anyone else can obtain privileged material about you.

If you have a complaint

Tell us first. Put it in writing using the details below, say what happened and say what you would like done about it. A privacy complaint is dealt with by the practice rather than by the person you were dealing with, and making one does not change how your matter is run.

If we have not responded within 30 days, or you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. The OAIC generally expects you to have complained to us first and to have given us those 30 days. It can be reached on 1300 363 992 or through its website.

A complaint about our legal service, our costs or our conduct as solicitors is a different thing and takes a different path. That is set out on our complaints page, and the external body for it is the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner, not the OAIC.

This policy covers this website and the immigration work My Visa Lawyer does as part of Jameson Law. If we change it, the current version will always be on this page and the date at the top will change. See also our terms of use and our accessibility statement.

Privacy requests and complaints

Write to us at the firm’s head office or by email, and say that it is a privacy request or a privacy complaint so that it reaches the right person rather than being treated as a general enquiry. If you would rather talk it through first, call.

[email protected]

Phone

(02) 8806 0866

Post

Jameson Law, Suite 301, 67–69 Philip Street, Parramatta NSW 2150

Who you are contacting

My Visa Lawyer is an informational website about Australian immigration law. Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation.

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

1300 363 992, or lodge a complaint at oaic.gov.au