Australian Border Force (ABF) has issued an urgent notice confirming that almost every major immigration IT platform—including ImmiAccount, eLodgement, VEVO, eMedical, LEGENDcom and the APEC Business Travel Card portal—will be taken offline for scheduled maintenance from 8:30 pm AEDT on Friday 28 November until 12 noon AEDT on Saturday 29 November.
While planned outages are not unusual, the breadth and timing of this 15-hour shutdown is significant. The window coincides with the final business day of the month, a peak period for corporate mobility teams lodging last-minute renewals before visas expire at midnight. ABF is warning applicants whose current visas lapse on 28 November to file extensions early or risk falling on to a Bridging Visa E, which carries stringent work-right restrictions and no Medicare access.
![15-Hour Shutdown of Australia’s Online Visa Platforms Set for 28-29 November]()
Employers and universities are also on alert. During the outage, organisations will be unable to run VEVO checks to confirm work-rights or upload Confirmation of Enrolment data for international students. Payroll teams that rely on VEVO batch files for right-to-work audits have been told to schedule alternative compliance checks, while freight forwarders using the Australian Trusted Trader interface should brace for manual processing delays.
ABF says the maintenance will deliver “security hardening and performance improvements” ahead of the Christmas travel surge, when visa-status look-ups typically double. However, mobility managers fear knock-on effects if data migrations over-run, recalling the 2023 outage that stretched to 26 hours and generated a backlog of 35,000 un-actioned applications.
Practical advice for mobility teams includes: (1) lodge any time-critical applications by close of business Thursday 27 November; (2) print VEVO records in advance for travellers transiting Australia over the weekend; (3) brief assignees that online payments will be unavailable; and (4) build contingency time into onboarding schedules for new hires arriving in early December.
While planned outages are not unusual, the breadth and timing of this 15-hour shutdown is significant. The window coincides with the final business day of the month, a peak period for corporate mobility teams lodging last-minute renewals before visas expire at midnight. ABF is warning applicants whose current visas lapse on 28 November to file extensions early or risk falling on to a Bridging Visa E, which carries stringent work-right restrictions and no Medicare access.
Employers and universities are also on alert. During the outage, organisations will be unable to run VEVO checks to confirm work-rights or upload Confirmation of Enrolment data for international students. Payroll teams that rely on VEVO batch files for right-to-work audits have been told to schedule alternative compliance checks, while freight forwarders using the Australian Trusted Trader interface should brace for manual processing delays.
ABF says the maintenance will deliver “security hardening and performance improvements” ahead of the Christmas travel surge, when visa-status look-ups typically double. However, mobility managers fear knock-on effects if data migrations over-run, recalling the 2023 outage that stretched to 26 hours and generated a backlog of 35,000 un-actioned applications.
Practical advice for mobility teams includes: (1) lodge any time-critical applications by close of business Thursday 27 November; (2) print VEVO records in advance for travellers transiting Australia over the weekend; (3) brief assignees that online payments will be unavailable; and (4) build contingency time into onboarding schedules for new hires arriving in early December.
