Hello Lou
I absolutely echo what Alan Collett has said. He is absolutely right and your best bet is to listen to him, lass.
I have a reason for replying to you publicly instead of in a PM. The reason is because I hope that Alan Collett will read this reply and chip in about whether it is possible to re-jig your tax-position for a long enough period. He is an accountant, so he understands what is possible with tax-arrangements, which I don't. To make it easy for him to find the right bit, I will put the relevant paraagraph in italics to make it stand out.
I realise that your reply to Alan is nothing more than a rather panicky knee-jerk reaction to alarming news from him. I understand that completely and I'd be in a similar panic myself. However, if you can just stay calm, we can have a realistic bash at sorting this mess out. Your ideas so far are not realistic and they are potential boomerangs. They are far too likely to miss their targets and to come back and hit you. :oops:
It is obvious from your questions that what has happened is that you did not research the AoS side of things carefully enough and that you do not understand it properly yet. Therefore please read these articles by Alan Collett because it is essential that you start from the right place.
http://www.gomatilda.com/news/article.cfm?articleid=391
http://www.gomatilda.com/news/article.cfm?articleid=214
In answer to two questions you have posed:
1. No, your parents cannot be self-assuring. That is definite.
2. 1. Your parents will be able to *sponsor* other people for migration after they have lived in Oz for not less than two years.
2.2 I am 99.9% sure that they would not be able to *Assure* anyone else until their own 10 year AoS has expired and they have made no recoverable claims on Centrelink during that time.
Sponsoring someone and Assuring them are two completely different ideas, even though the same person might undertake both roles. But the roles themselves carry completely different obligations from each other.
Lou, I think you are on
completely the wrong track in the rest of your response to Alan, and that to try to do any of the things you are discussing would simply create even more of a mess than the one you are already in.
I am serious about boomerangs. The DIAC website provides the necessary link to the Centrelink website and recommends reading it. The Centrelink website recommends that prospective Assurers should ring them in order to get one-to-one advice. What inspired you to ignore both recommendations?
If you start trying to throw your weight around in the manner which you are suggesting, you will simply make a fool of yourself and you will also exasperate everyone whilst doing nothing constructive by way of sorting the mess out.
Your idea about a salary-scheme for the next three months does not work. Three months at the last minute does not satisfy the necessary test. To get this notion to work, you would have to re-jig your finances right back to 1 July 2004 AND get the ATO to issue new TANs for 2004/5 & 2005/6 after all that has been done. I don't know whether it would even be possible to do what would need to be done but even if it is, I imagine it would take until Doomsday to do and Centrelink will not wait indefinitely for you to sort this mess out.
If you get up Centrelink's nose then they could simply give up on you and inform DIAC that the requirements for the AoS have not been met on behalf of your parents. That would give DIAC the authority to refuse the visa so you absolutely do not want to go anywhere near this path - let alone down it - I firmly suggest. I doubt whether it is possible to get a decision by Centrelink Reviewed until they have made one - which they haven't as yet. Don't tempt them to jump the gun via irritating the managers with none-too-sensible demands. At the moment, Centrelink's staff are on-side and trying to help you so let us keep it that way, I recommend.
Now, let us get on to considering ideas that might solve the problem instead of sabre-rattling, shall we?
You have assumed (correctly) that your Partner's family's position must also be protected at all costs, therefore he cannot join with you in Assuring your Parents. Neither can your Parents stroll into Australia and immediately Assure his parents, so that notion is a non-starter too.
What about friends and colleagues of yours? I know another couple who were in a similar mess but it looks as if there has been a breakthrough in the last 48 hours or so. On his own, their only child is in the same situation as you - not enough net asessable income to satisfy Centrelink. However, a friend of the child has stepped into the breech and has offered to help out, so it looks as though that situation might have a happy outcome despite having been very worrying for some weeks.
Corporations can provide AoSs. Please see here, but please bear in mind that the figures in the Social Security Guide are hopelessly out of date. Use Alan Collett's figures instead.
http://www.facs.gov.au/guides_acts/s...-9.4.3.90.html
Unincorporated bodies can do so as well. Please see here:
http://www.facs.gov.au/guides_acts/s...9.4.3.100.html
Although there are limits on the number of people an individual can Assure at any one time, there are no such restrictions on corporations and other bodies.
How good is your relationship with your employer and/or could you or any of your friends provide your parents' AoS through a company, either alone or jointly with you?
I really do suggest that you confine yourself to the avenues I have suggested and leave boomerang-throwing for another occasion, chooks.
And if there really, really turns out to be No Other Way then there are organisations in Australia that are willing to provide Assurances of Support in return for a fee. I don't personally know anyone who does this, but I do have some names and contact details. (And I know an Australian businessman who might consider it a lucrative sideline for his own company, come to think of it, not that he has ever been involved with this game hitherto.)
However, it is WAY too soon to be thinking of options like that because none of the other potentially do-able options have been tried yet.
Right. I think I have bored you and everyone else enough for one evening, so I will now shut up!
Best wishes
Gill
