Lisa De Leon

The travel exemption will be needed for the visa application, not the sponsorship.

Parents will be recognised as Immediate Family for the purposes of a travel exemption request from 1 November 2021. It will then be possible to apply for a travel exemption in the Immediate Family category after this date. Once a travel exemption is approved the visa application can progress.

Your calculations are incorrect. These numbers also include non-contributory applications.

I see nothing about 15 - 18 years. Yes there is a backlog, and that is where the 870 visa can be useful so that families can be together while they await processing of their parent visas.

The Family Sponsorship process for an 870 visa application is a separate process. It is not the same as a sponsor for a 143 visa application. It sounds like you need assistance.

Where do you get this information? The current processing time is 5 - 6 years.

The 870 visa allows continuous stay in Australia for the period of visa grant. Your friends are referring to a 600 Visitor visa where you can only stay 12 months upon each entry.

Hi Scott. The issue at the moment is getting a travel exemption approved. Under the current Border Force definition of immediate family member, this only includes partners and children but not parents. The visa cannot be granted without an approved travel exemption. This is also the case with Visitor visas. The application can be lodged, but the visa will not be granted until the associated travel exemption request (TER) is approved. These TER are requiring a ridiculous amount of relationship evidence to be approved for partners, almost as much as a partner visa application. Until they include parents in the Inward Travel Directive they will not be able to be granted a visa while offshore. It's a different story for 870 applicants who are onshore. inward-travel-restrictions-operation-directive.pdf

TSPV 870-Australian Visa Options.pdf

According to a Facebook group for Registered Migration Agents, there have not been a lot of 870 Sponsor approvals thus far. Agents were still waiting at beginning of July for sponsorship applications lodged in April. My first application took about 8 weeks. The visas are capped at 15,000 places annually, and I have heard that around 500 sponsorship applications have been lodged so far.

What would you like to know?

If the nomination is refused you can withdraw the visa application but you won't get a refund of the visa application charge. I would suggest to lodge them at the same time if your wife's 45th birthday is looming.

It can take more than 6 months. If possible, lodge onshore and lodge the visa application at the same time. Your wife could work for the employer on her bridging visa while the 186 is being processed. Alternatively, the employer could sponsor your wife for a 482 to get her here faster. Nominations in the Short Term stream are taking around 49 days, and nominations in the Medium Long Term stream are taking around 38 days. Midwife 254111 is on the MLTSSL.

NSW also has a similar system where they invite people with high points, the other states will consider at 65 points. Unless the occupation is on a Supplementary list like South Australia where you can still get nominated if you have high points.

Due to the high number of applications, Victoria has introduced a new selection process for State Nomination under the following occupations: ICT, Nursing, Engineering and Building occupations Applicants now need to lodge an Expression of Interest into Skill Select and indicate your interest for Victorian nomination. You do not need to notify Victoria that you have submitted an EOI. If selected, an email invitation to apply for Victorian visa nomination will be sent to your email address used for the EOI. There is no set timeframe to expect an invitation after submitting an EOI. Invitations are not guaranteed. If selected you must lodge your application with the Victorian government within 14 days of receiving the invitation. If successfully nominated by the Victorian government you will then receive an invitation to apply for the visa through Skill Select, and will have 60 days to do so. As you can see it is highly competitive and obviously the highest scoring applicants will be invited first. If you are not selected you will not receive an email, and your EOI will stay in the Skill Select system. I would consider a points score of 75 or above to have a good chance. 70 points will take longer, and 65 points only getting approved with a job offer.