[Gollywobbler]

Hello Minlady

I'm really sorry for the delay in responding to you. Unfortunately, you need to absorb a lot of information about this, so I had to wait for enough time to give you a thoughtful, coherent response instead of trying to give you a quick answer and confusing you totally with it. I plan to break this reply down into different sections, which will hopefully help to clarify things as well.

Settled Sponsor

Honey, your Parents can't sensibly apply for any of the visas in the Parent group until your own lifestyle in Oz has become "settled." The reason is because you will have to Sponsor M&D's application. The Sponsor undertakes that if the Parents should fall on hard times during their first two years in Oz, the Sponsor will provide them with an adequate home, food, clothing and enough money for their day to day living expenses, so that the Parents will not need to claim (or become eligible for) Special Benefit instead during their first two years out in Oz. The Sponsor cannot realistically give this undertaking unless the Sponsor's own lifestyle is settled.

It is a time-of-application requirement that the Sponsor must be a settled permanent resident of Australia. If you jump the gun on your Parents' behalf, the risk is that DIAC will refuse the visa on the ground that you had not become sufficiently settled in Oz by the time the application was made. Now - you might appeal against such a refusal and you might win in the Migration Review Tribunal if you do, but it is safer to avoid the risk of a visa refusal, I would suggest. Nobody needs the emotional stress that an Appeal would inevitably cause.

Alan Collett of Go Matilda has recently produced a very good article about this issue, which is here:

http://www.gomatilda.com/news/article.cfm?articleid=441

Read the two cases that Alan has cited very carefully indeed, and in particular study the Badcock case, which is the more recent one and also it is closer to your own circumstances than the Sampson case, in as much as you did not make a rekky visit between the grant of your visa and your move out to Oz.

However, the fact remains that you did not activate your PR visa till about 2 months ago. If you read what DIAC have to say about demonstrating that the Sponsor is settled, the people in charge of the Policy which underpins the legislation would prefer it if prospective Sponsors live in Oz for around two years before trying to Sponsor other members of their families for migration to Australia as well. Please see Page 16 of Booklet 3, which is here:

http://www.immi.gov.au/allforms/booklets/books3.htm

The Policy textbooks acknowledge that the facts may support either a lesser or a greater waiting period than the general two-year “rule of thumb” and the cases prove that the Tribunal is willing to consider exceptions to the general rule.

That said, though, there are sensible arguments to support DIAC’s own views about this. The evidence is that a percentage of migrants to Oz get there and find that Oz is not for them after all. A high number of them leave Oz rather than trying to stick it out. The factual evidence is that the majority of migrants who decide not to stay leave Australia within two years of arrival.

Just to give you some examples of people whom you “know” via Poms in Oz, Muppetbro went to Adelaide full of hope in 2007, but he has recently left Oz after only about 7 or 8 months there. I think John (Essex to Aus) was there for about 9 months but he has also recently come home. Aldo has certainly not been there for 2 years but he has now put his house on the market and seems to plan to leave Oz fairly quickly once his house has been sold. There are several others as well if you look through Poms in Oz threads and also read the “Going Home” section or whatever it is called on British Expats. The Policy makers are definitely right about the idea that the migrants who decide not to stay in Oz have generally left Oz before two years have elapsed since they migrated.

Obviously it is sensible to discourage people from trying to get their families to join them until it has become clear whether or not the first member of the family will actually stay in Australia long term him or herself. It would be particularly wrong to uproot elderly Parents in haste, and for them to hot foot it to Oz on a very expensive visa only to get there and find that their child is as miserable as sin and wants the whole family to return to the UK. The Oz Govt won’t prevent the Parents from leaving, but the current cost of a CP visa for a couple is $64,500 to DIAC and a further $14,000 Bond in connection with the Assurance of Support. Trying to get the Bond released before the 10 years that it is normally held for has expired would not be easy and the Government will not return any part of the $64,500 no matter what anybody tries to beg of them.

Therefore the whole family does need a chance to give the child time in which to find his/her feet in Oz and to make sure that the child’s early enchantment with Oz is not just a “honeymoon period” which might wither and be replaced by much less enthusiasm for the place given more time.