Will a medical condition affect a visa application?

[barrydougall]

Hi all, My hubby and I are seriously thinking of going to live in Australia. We are in the process of just starting to find out how to go about it etc.... Anyway we have four kids and one of our kids has a medical condition called joint hypermobility syndrome. It is not contagious. It affects my daughter in that she has daily pain muscular and joint and gets very tired,has Irratible bowel and other symptoms. She only manages part time schooling and has to do daily physio to keep her muscles strong and her mobile. She also has aids to help her do daily tasks in an easier way for instance a lap top at school as writing is too painful. Sorry this was long. What i want to know is do you think our visa application would be rejected due to my daughters condition? One of the reasons for the thoughts to move to Australia, is the climate which i think will be of tremendous benefit health wise for my daughter.

TED

[shar07]

Sorry cant help you much, just wanted to say welcome, it may be worth getting in touch with an agent that will be able to advise you. Hope somebody can help you just wanted to wish you luck.

[barrydougall]

Can someone please explain the immigration process to me. We are seriously looking into a move to Australia with our 4 kids. We really want a totally different lifestyle than the one we have at the moment.

Why do some of the applications take only a few months and others take years? what slows the process down? We were kind of hoping to have gone through the process and hopefully be granted a visa and be there by August but is that just wishful thinking?

bd

[bernie]

Hi there, it all depends on what visa you apply for. If you are going with a job and sponsored it often goes through quicker than applying for a permanent visa. I don't know about all the visas as there are many different routes to take but that's the general opinion I get! If you investigate the right visa for you, often people on this site write a time line at the end of their threads and this help give you an idea of how long to expect. Good luck with you decisions.

[Gollywobbler]

Hello TED

Welcome to Poms in Oz.

I know nothing about the medical condition which you have described except what you have told us. In Oz, though, there tend to be Australia-wide Associations for almost every type of medical condition.

I would suggest that you tell Google to find Google Australia. Tell the latter to confine itself to Australian web-pages. I think it will be worth tracking down the Australian Association for this condition because they would be able to tell you about the type of help available etc out there.

On the visa front, yes the condition could definitely be a problem. Much depends on the cost of the help that your daughter needs now, and whether she will be able to be fully independent, physically and financially, once she is an adult.

You have not mentioned her age and that could be quite a significant factor in the view that the Medical Officer of the Commonwealth would take, I suspect.

I would suggest that you have look at the following:

Poms in Perth Discussion Board :: View topic - November Migration newsletter here ..

Ignore Steven O'Neil's Newsletter. Scroll down through the post itself. He gives a lot of useful information about the way different groups of medical conditions are viewed.

dima_health - Australian High Commission

Read Form 1071i in the light of the info from Steven O'Neil.

It would also be worth contacting George Lombard, a Registered Migration Agent in Sydney:

Welcome to Austimmigration | George Lombard Consultancy Pty. Ltd.

George has a doctor working as part of his team. Elena (the doctor) would need to see your daughter's specialist's reports etc but she and George should then be able to come up with a pretty shrewd guess about which way the Medical Officer of the Commonwealth would be likely to jump.

Elena is at George's office on Tuesday mornings. A preliminary voice chat with her might be a good way to get started in trying to find out what sort of impact your daughter's condition might be likely to have if you were to apply to migrate.

I hope this will help to get you started with resolving your query.

Best wishes

Gill

[barrydougall]

Hi thanks for all that i will certainly look at all of the info you have provided.

My daughter is 9. I don't work as I need to be here for her and I also look after my 18 mth old. She is not disabled, but if I don't manage her condition well by keeping a good balance between work/rest & play, her life has to be paced or else she cant manage a normal life. She has got various depts here involved in her care. For instance physio, Consultant Paed, Podiatrist (for insoles) So She would need a certain amount of medical care and help at school too. Although I am the one who mainly manages her care.

My hubby works full time as a Print Supervisor and also runs and manages a business from home and has a lot of experience/qualifications in his trade. this is of value.

So we are worried as to whether her health problems would cause our application to be rejected.

TED

[Gollywobbler]

Hello Barry

Welcome to Poms in Oz.

First you need to know whether you have a skill in demand in Australia. Please see the following link:

A-Z Occupations List - Australian Skills Recognition Information

At this stage, the three most important questions are:

• What is your skill?
• Do you have the necessary qualifications and experience in your field to render you eligible for skilled migration to Oz?
• What is your age?

Starting in April, there is no way you would be in Australia by August 2008 unless you are aamazingly lucky. August 2009 is a much more realistic target.

The easiest way to get a mental map of the migration process is to speak with a couple of firms of Registered Migration Agents:

Go Matilda - Your Gateway to Australia - Visa, Tax, and Financial Planning for Australia

Registered Australian Migration Agents, UK - Ian Harrop and Associates

They can cover more ground with you in a free telephone chat lasting 10-15 minutes than you could cover in 10 weeks of slogging your way through the DIAC website on your own, my friend.

However you should also get to grips with the DIAC website and its contents. Please see the links below:

Workers - Visas & Immigration

Information Booklets - Applications & Forms - Visas & Immigration

Best wishes

Gill

[barrydougall]

What are the different types of visa?

My OH is a Print Supervisor and he also manages his own small printing business from home so he is highly qualified and experienced in his trade and his trade is apparently in demand.

Would he be better applying for jobs now and get someone to sponser him or wait and see if we will be accepted into the country first? One hindrance I can forsee is that my 9 yr old daughter has a health condition which I need to manage.

bd

[karen111]

i would strongly advice that you seek the advice from an agent especially if there is a medical condition that may have an issue. most reputable agents will offer a free initial consultation for free with no obligation so dont be afraid to make the initial call. another thing is to first check they are MARA registered. this is the governing body for visa agents. if you just google you,ll find loads. good luck with whatever you decide. keep us all posted how you go

[Gollywobbler]

Hello Mrs BD

My OH is a Print Supervisor and he also manages his own small printing business from home so he is highly qualified and experienced in his trade and his trade is apparently in demand.

Printing Machinist appears to be a recognised skill. Is a Print Supervisor the same thing, please? Please see here:

Printing Machinist 4912-11 - Australian Skills Recognition Information

Please note that it seems to think that using printing presses is an essential part of a Printing Machinist's skill.

If Printing Machinist does not fit the bill, can you find anything else on the list that does fit Hubby's skill, please?

A-Z Occupations List - Australian Skills Recognition Information

Would he be better applying for jobs now and get someone to sponser him or wait and see if we will be accepted into the country first?

Skilled independent migration is usually preferable to sponsored migration for a variety of reasons. For one thing, getting a skilled subclass 175 visa does not prevent one from securing a job offer before moving to Oz. If employer-sponsorship is needed before a visa is possible, then one has a bigger hill to climb and it is unlikely that there would be a choice of jobs-with-sponsorship available or a choice of locations available with such a job. With an sc 175 visa one can do any job once in Oz, even in a completely different field. One can even loaf on the beach instead of working at all if one so wishes.

That said, though:

One hindrance I can forsee is that my 9 yr old daughter has a health condition which I need to manage.

The fact that you need to manage your daughter's condition is not relevant. What is very relevant though is the fact that adult management of the condition, which might be quite intensive management of it, is required.

Reminding a child to have her insulin jab or whatever is neither here nor there. Most children need to be reminded to have a bath, too.

However if DIAC accept a child as a permannet resident of Australia, they are required to assume that both parents will then drop dead not long after the family have moved to Australia. In that event, the Australian Government cannot send the orphaned child back to his/her country or origin.

Therefore if the worst comes to the worst, the Australian Government would have to take over the late parent's management of the child's medical condition. The only way the State could do that is via community nursing or whatever is needed. The cost of this would be "significant" potentially. Plus commmunity care nursing or similar may be a resource in scant supply out in Oz. As described in Form 1071i, which is here:

http://www.immi.gov.au/allforms/pdf/1071i.pdf

At the end of the day, the Medical Officer of the Commonwealth of Australia (MOC) is the only person in the world who is legally empowered to give an opinion about whether or not your daughter is able to meet the medical criteria for permanent migration to Oz.

Registered Migration Agents who have made a close study of the medico-legal criteria (which only a small handful have) can offer you no more than an educated guess about which way the MOC might jump. Ideally the RMA needs to be working in tandem with a doctor because RMAs are not medical experts because obviously the doctor can explain anything that the RMA is unclear about regarding the actual medical condition itself.

The other thing to note is that different visas carry different rights of appeal in the event of a visa refusal. One of the RMAs who understands the medico legal stuff properly would have a look at whether the appeal rights might be of value in a particular case. If so then he might suggest one visa instead of another, to as to give you the maximum chance of success, if necessary via a potential appeal to the Migration Review Tribunal. (Not all skilled visas carry a right to appeal to the MRT but some do.)

For these reasons I responded to your other thread with the suggestuon that I think your first port of call should be George Lombard in Sydney:

Welcome to Austimmigration | George Lombard Consultancy Pty. Ltd.

I am not in any way trying to be unhelpful. From what you have said, I think the shot may be too close to call. But I am not a doctor and I am not a migration agent either. I think you should take properly qualified and experienced advice about what (if any) impact your daughter's condition might have on a visa application. If I were to offer comment myself I would be doing nothing better than guessing, which would be a grave disservice to you.

Best wishes

Gill