[Gollywobbler]

Because of the Appeals Question, onshore Agents nearly always recommend that when Parents are as old as yours one should try to get them into Australia first so as to be able to make an onshore application for an Aged Parent or Contributory Aged Parent visa instead.

The way this idea works is that when the tourist visas which have gotten the Parents into Oz in the first place expire, the Parents switch to Bridging Visa. These enable them to stay in Oz until the outcome of the AP/CAP application is eventually known. If there is a visa refusal on medical or any other grounds, the family can appeal to the Migration Review Tribunal. If the MRT upholds the refusal then depending on the reason for the refusal it may be possible to appeal to the Court next. Whether or not the Court gets involved, if the MRT refuses the visa then the family can make a direct appeal to the Minister for Immigration.

The Minister alone has the power to waive all or any of the criteria for a given visa if he – in his sole discretion – considers it to be in the public interest to do so. Australia is not keen on acquiring an international reputation as a bunch of inhumane bastards who would deport honest people in their 80s and 90s, so although the outcomes of Ministerial Appeals are not reported, it seems pretty unlikely that a frail and ancient Parent would be thrown out of Oz in the end. The Parent remains in Oz, on the Bridging Visa, until the outcome of the appeal to the Minister is eventually known, so effectively it is likely that a Parent who is too ill to pass the meds will probably end up remaining on a Bridging Visa for the rest of his or her life.

Which – if one is considering the legal issues alone – is an argument that I find compelling. Plainly the best place for an ancient Parent is with his or her only child in Australia if the child is not willing to consider leaving Australia in order to care for his/her Parents elsewhere.

However, I don’t like the Medicare angle with Bridging Visas and British Parent visa applicants. Please see Form 1024i below:

http://www.immi.gov.au/allforms/pdf/1024i.pdf

According to that form, Medicare is not available to an applicant for a Parent visa who is in Oz on a Bridging Visa (and we can bet that this applies to applicants for Contributory Aged Parent visas as well.) In this scenario, it is not clear whether the RHCA between the UK and Oz will reverse Form 1024i or whether it won’t. The day the Parent is being admitted to Intensive Care is not the time to try to find out, either, so I think that for safety’s sake one would need to buy absolutely top-of-the-range medical private medical insurance for the Parents concerned, irrespective of the cost of the Policy, which would be high. $600 a month minimum for such an elderly couple would not surprise me at all. I also wouldn’t want to see this situation dragging on for too long, which brings us back to the quota / processing times / length of time for Appeals.

I actually think – myself – that the offshore visa coupled with one or two long stay tourist visas is much simpler, safer and vastly more elegant than getting involved with the uncertainties of Bridging Visas in a situation where the Parent might sail through the visa meds anyway. If there is no reason to doubt that the Parent will pass the meds, and the processing of the offshore CPV is likely to be reasonably speedy, then I can’t see the point of taking a risk with adequate medical cover for the sake of an appeals process which may not have to be used in the end anyway.

The onshore visa is used every time if there is genuine reason to suppose that the Parent will not pass the meds. In that situation there is really no viable alternative, and when the Parent is from a country that does not have a reciprocal health care agreement with Oz, any Parent of 70 or over would need private medical insurance in order to be able to get a 12 month stay on a tourist visa anyway, so I think the situation is actually less complicated for families which are not British and therefore do not make comparisons with the Welfare State in the UK.

British Parents are shocked by having to pay $31.30 per drug every time they need a routine repeat prescription for medicines for their various ailments because they can get the scripts filled for free in the UK. But if Medicare is not available then the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme is not available either, which could result in a bill of over $100 just for one repeat script for one particular drug.