Hi, I hope someone will help. My daughter is keen to return to Oz with her boyfriend who is an Oz citizen. She wants to go asap and is thinking of applying for a tourist visa for 6 months then a defacto one in Oz.
She says she thinks a Uk application will take too long and besides her boyfriend/ sponsor will have a job in oz which should help when she applies there.
Can someone help? What is she best doing? She wants to go asap and at minimum cost!
We were in a similar position. I am an Aussie citizen and I sponsored my partner Jan to get her De-facto spouse visa. It came through after about 10 days after an informal interview over the phone with the embassy.
If you meet the requirements for the de-facto visa I would go for that one..
Thanks for your advice, much appreciated. Was the 10 days after you received the visa because the medical was done some time before?. If so is it ok to do this?
I entered Australia on a tourist visa and then applied for defacto spouse migration. I submitted my medicals and police checks with the application, but it still took 3 months to process. Just be aware that you can't work on a tourist visa, so you might have to live on a tight budget and find some good hobbies to keep you occupied!
Also, if doing your medicals in advance, they must be done at an approved medical centre. I think there's a list on the DIMIA web site. Otherwise you'll have to do them all over again, and pay twice.
All this is confusing but helpful at the same time!
Can anyone verify for sure that you can apply for a de facto visa when actually in Oz on a 3 month tourist visa? Can you get police checks and a medical done in Oz if you're British before lodging the de facto application or am I best to get them done here before we go to oz to apply?
My partner has a medical condition and we dont want to go thru the heartache of failing the medical at the last stage
Can you have a medical before hand
Hello sabink
Be a little careful, my friend. They will not process medicals unless they also receive a visa application. Without the visa application, somebody's medicals are none of DIAC's business so they have no jurisdiction to get involved.
Also, if the Panel Doctor is able to tick Box A on Form 26 then the meds are simply processed by the administrative staff in London, which takes two minutes once they pick up the file, match it to the by-then received visa application and bingo.
However, if the Panel Doctor has ticked Box B then the meds file has to be sent to Sydney for the Medical Officer of the Commonwealth (MOC) to assess them and to advise the Minister about whether or not the health requirement for migration is met. The Panel Doctor merely examines the visa applicant and reports what s/he finds. The PD has no involvement in the question of whether or not the medical criteria for migration are met.
With Spouse/Partner visas, a waiver of the normal health requirements is potentially possible. In advising DIAC, the MOC has to consider (and explain) what the costs of caring for the visa applicant in Australia would be and this includes potential State Benefits such as the Disability Support Pension if the visa applicant is or will soon become unable to work. Very often, the actual medical care would not be expensive and/or involve the visa applicant needing access to medical and community care that is in short supply, but the potential entitlement to State Benefits would push the costs into the stratosphere. If DSP is payable then a number of other Benefits are potentially payable as well and between them they can add up to a lot when calculated from now until the visa applicant turns 65.
So in the cases where a health waiver is potentially possible, the MOC gives an estimate of the likely costs and it is then up to the Case Officer to decide whether to grant the visa or not.
The PD cannot tell you which way DIAC are likely to jump. He can give you his best guess, based on experience with past applicants, but he cannot do more than that and some of them are curmudgeons who refuse to speculate.
So I think you would be well advised to read the documents in the following links. If after that you think that the medical condition could be a showstopper, I would recommend that you obtain professional advice from George Lombard in Sydney about the best visa strategy for you and your Partner. The reason why I would suggest George is that he is in Australia, he is not afraid of this legislation, he is interested in the medico-legal aspects of it plus he has a doctor, Elena, who works with him part time. Elena can understand technical, medical reports and based on her input, George is then able to suggest the best strategy for the applicant in question.
