Hi
I've been trying to find out how to get my parents to Australia with me if we get granted the general skilled 136 visa. I think the only way is a contributory temporary aged parents visa, then onto a contributory aged parents residence visa.
I believe i would have to reside in Australia for 2 years in order to sponsor them?
Is there anyway around this?
I thought maybe get them a visitors visa and say that they were helpling us to migrate, so would they make it a 12 month visa & well then i get stuck there, would they be able to apply for an extension on their visitors visa, until i get my 'settlement period'.
If anyone has got any advice on keeping my parents with me, please let me know.
We are going to be sending our TRA off soon, once we have had it signed by a solicitor on Thursday.
You seem to be pretty well researched about your parents' visa strategy, save only to say that if an Assurer can be found they might look at moving straight to a Contributory Parents visa rather than the two step (temporary => permanent) strategy.
Also, the Aged Parents visa can only be applied for when the applicant is onshore.
As to whether long stay tourist visas can be used to help them spend long periods in Australia while you are satisfying the sponsor's need to be "settled" - the DIMA is generally averse to providing what amounts to enduring and continuous long stays in Australia as the holder of a tourist visa.
PS. When parent applicants are outside Australia they would apply for the Contributory Parent visa. This visa requires the applicant to be outside Australia at the time of visa grant, unlike the Contributory Aged Parent category.
I agree with Alan Collett. Very briefly, my mother had to rely on tourist visas from 1992 until 2006 because nothing else was possible for her. She would not have been able to satisfy the Balance of Family test before 2003, when a Tribunal case confirmed that the way that a now-adult step-child is treated for the purposes of this Test was altered by a change in the legislation in 1999. I won't bore you with the details because they are not relevant to your own situation.
DIMA in London are very accommodating about tourist-visas for British Parents, we have found, provided that they are only being used as a temporary stepping-stone and not as an alternative to Parent Migration. Do not be seduced by my mother's own history with these visas, because there was a definite shift in Policy in 2004 and although we managed to wheedle another 6 months in Oz for Mum out of DIMA then, their stroppiness was the wake up call that made me re-investigate whether Parent migration would be possible for Mum after all. The Officer concerned actually did us a huge favour though we did not think so at the time and the probability is that he didn't realise it either! Unwittingly, he kicked my own ass into getting cracking on the situation instead of lying low and trying to ignore the whole issue.
I wear my heart on my sleeve with these visas. I have not got the time, the wish or the patience to try to sidle round DIMA by half-painting the picture. My experience is that they respond constructively to the truth and bend over backwards to help if they are shown that the story is true.
Let us assume that you get your 136 visa and decide to use it to move to Australia. Your Parents can satisfy the BoF test, so as long as they are in reasonable health too, Parent migration will become possible for them in due course. Why not just explaim that to DIMA when you apply fotr their subclass 676 tourist visas asking for up to 12 months at a time? All that they would be doing is marking time and I really don't think DIMA would have a problem with the idea.
Hi Gill,
My sister got an email with a migration agent she has been using, they said that if they applied for a Tourist/visitor visa, then that is what their intentions should be, not for any other reason, they will not help anymore without drawing contracts up for my parents.
We are hoping to research it enough that they won't need to spend any other money, they will have to give up there house as it is to pay for the contibutory aged parents visas. It all gets a bit confusing when you've read about too many visa's and trying to sort out our own stuff aswell. Headaches are all a bit too often at the moment!!!!!!
Thanks for your advice.
By the way, did your mum get to stay in Oz on a tourist/visitors visa for more than 6 months at a time?
We have never used a Migration Agent for any of Mum's visas. Tourist visas are very straghtforward and you can easily tackle those by yourselves. You need to have lived in Oz for two years before you will become eligible to sponsor your parents for a CP visa, so you'll have plenty of time to swot up on those and be able to handle the application yourselves.
Mum was over 70 by the time she started to spend most of each year in Australia. To start with she was allowed to spend a year at a time out in Oz, but as she got older they cut that to six months at a time, though the visas were valid for multiple entry. So she went to Oz for six months, then to Thailand for a couple of weeks, then back to Oz for another six months. After the second six months she came back to the UK and we started the process again. That worked fine until 2004, so we weren't really bothered about the fact that she was not eligible for Parent migration because of the BoF Test.
However, they did get stroppy with Mum in 2004 and the officer who rang her said she was abusing the system by using tourist visas to live in Autralia, in effect. She pleaded with him and he gave her another six months, but that visa was not valid for multiple entry so she had to come back to the UK after only 6 months. However, she was nearly 86 by then so her advanced age might have had a lot to do with their stroppinessl, because they worry about parents going to Ox on tourist visas and becoming too ill to leave.
Mum returned to the UK in July 2005 and I set about swotting up on the CP visa for her, established that she can now meet the BoF test and got her application ready. At the time, the POPC were saying that they were taking about 9 months to process CP applications. So I made simultaneous applications for the CP visa and also for another subclass 676 tourist visa for Mum. I sent a covering letter to London explaining about the CP application and asking them to let Mum have 8 unbroken months out in Oz, so that she could spend most of the processing period out there. Her passport came back with the new tourist visa in it a fortnight later and they gave her the 8 months I had asked for. I then rang the POPC and made sure that the main application had reached them safely. It had, so I put Mum on a plane to Perth that weekend. She came back to the UK 5 weeks before her CP visa was granted and she flew back to Oz two days ago, to activate her new CP visa. That is the final step in the process so she can now come and go from Oz whenever she pleases and not becaus yet another tourist visa is about to expire, or she can remain in Oz for as long as she likes if she prefers.
I think that the best way for your parents would be to apply for ubclass 878 tourist visas using the paper & post vesrion. That will enable them to send a covering letter with the application, explaining about you and that they are thinking of migrating as Contributory Parents as soon as you are eligible to sponsor them. Meanwhile they want to have a good look at Oz to enable them to decide whether they could be happy there themselves. DIMA might well let them stay for a year. They gace a friend of mine's 69 uear old Mum a year a few weels ago, even though she only requested 6 months.
At the end of the first visa your parents should return to the UK, to prove that they still have ties here. Give it a couple of months and then apply for another 676 tourist visa, explaining that they are gearing up to make an application for a CP visa as soon as you can sponsor them. Then when they appy for the CP visa (which they will almost certainly have to do from offshore) they will be able to ask for a year on their third 676 visa with no difficulty, I suspect. Friends of mine have recently gone to Melbourne for a year whilst they wait for their own CP visa to be processed and some other applicants whom I am in touch with left for Oz for a few days ago. Both couples plan to go to Auckland or Fiji once their COs are ready to grant their CP visas.
As long as your parents are in reasonably good health when they make their applications for CP visas, I really can't see any difficulty here.
I think it is VER confusing to try to get your head round 3 different visas at once and I admire you for trying to. I think that for the moment, you should focus on your own application. Get tourist visas for Mum & Dad once your own visa has been granted and you are ready to move to Oz. Then you'll have another two years in which to get your heads round the details of the CP 143 and 173 visas.
I suspect that you will have to choose one of those two. DIMA is likely to impose Condition 8503 on the tourist visas in order to prevent your parents from being able to apply for Contributory Aged Parent visas from onshore, Mum's CP application had to be made from offshore for this reason.
We had a rather confusing situation with our last visas, as we were granted 4 year visas, although we hadn't asked for them. We didn't even know there was such a thing. However, our last two visits to Oz were 3 years apart and on the same visas. I am just about to apply for new visas for our impending trip next March.........I wonder what we will be given this time ?
You are describing the subclass 686 visa which was discontinued on 1 July 2005. The subclass 676 is now the only long-stay tourist visa for Oz.
They seem to be happy to allow Contributory Parent applicants from the UK to spend 12 moths in Oz during the processing wait. I think they would have given even Mum 12 months if I had asked for that.
How long are you thinking of going to Oz for, and do you intend to apply for the e-878? If you do, I'd be interested in fedback on how the application process with it works, because a friend of mine wants to have a go with it for her parents, though she is in Oz and I have been talking with her sister in the UK this evening. Both of us think that they should play safe and use the paper & post version because some people say that they have had great difficulty uploading documents into the e-system, plus my friend's Mum is 71 and has a medical problem which might worry DIMA when her doctor discloses it on the meds certificate that the over 70s have to produce.
Neither the sister or I have a clue how to work a scanner. I gather that the problem is that the DIMA computer will not acept uploads that are more than 1mb in size. The scanner's default is to turn the document into a jpeg, making for a large file, when what people ought to do is get Adobe Writer and turn them into pdf files, I gather. Which is all far too technical for me. If I need anything elaborate done with the computer at work, I wheedle the IT guys into doing it for me!
If you decide to go for the e-visa, I'd be very interested to hear how easy or dificult the computer end of things is with it.
Thanks guys for all your help, i think maybe my parents come out to Oz with me for as long as the visa states and then when i get my 'settlement' period over with, they can apply for the Aged Parenets Contributory visa.
One last question - or at least i think so
When they have to give the 2nd visa installment (the big one) does this mean that the visa has already been approved, or can they still loose the $30,000?
Rache
Not quite. Please just forget the idea of the Contributory Aged Parent visa, even if your parents are or would be old enough for it. They will almost certainly not be able to apply for the Aged (onshore) version of this visa but they will definitely be able to apply for the offshore version, which is the Contributory Parent visa.
The only downside with the Contributory Parent visa is that the Parent must be outside Australia when the application is launched, and outside Australia when it is granted and evidenced. However, they can launch the application from offshore and then go to Australia on a 12 month tourist visa during the wait. All they have to do then is go offshore again before the CP visa is granted.
To answer your second question, we specifically asked DIMA what would happen if we lodged the bond and paid the 2nd VAC, but then Mum popped her clogs before the visa could be validated. They wouldn't be shelling out for healthcare for a deceased, nor would they be vulnerable to any social security claims from the corpse. They confirmed that if this dire event happened, they would release the Bond and refund the 2nd VAC.
Now that Mum's visa has been validated, we have told her that she'll have to carry on living for at least another 20 years so that she and we can get our money's worth out of this visa!
