Hi All,
My family and I are starting to look at immigrating to Australia and I would like to get some initial advice on the visa options open to me.
To give some background:
- I am married with two dependant children
- All the immediate family on my side (i.e. parents and both siblings) immigrated around 2006 and are now Australian citizens
- I was included in the visa application made by my immediate family and was granted a PR visa as a result. Shortly after they moved out I did visit Australia to get this validated
- I was midway through my Uni degree at the time they moved and wanted to finish that. I also then met my wife and we never made the move over, with the permanent residency visa lapsing in 2011 (would need to confirm exactly)
I have only just started looking into this and I am a bit lost on the best way forward given my circumstances. I first started looking at the Remaining Relative visa. However, this doesn’t sound like a great option as there are potentially long wait times (50 years) and if I have read it right my wife’s family, who are all in the UK, will be considered “near relatives”.
I hadn’t considered using my previous PR visa, as I just assumed it had expired and that was that. However, I have come across the Resident Return visas (subclasses 155 & 157) and although I don’t have 2 years of living in Australia in the past 5, I can’t see anything in the eligibility requirements that would exclude me (please tell me if I am way off here).
I haven’t found anything specifically on this but I have a niggling feeling that the visits I’ve made since the PR lapsed might be a problem. These visits (2013 & 2018) were done on the eVisitor 651 visa which may make my lapsed PR visa null and void. Would this be the case?
If it isn’t the case, would applying for and RRV make sense? Appreciate I might need to give more information before this can be answered!
Obviously I need to consider what we do about my wife and children but want to bottom out the RRV option first.
Thanks for any advice/guidance you might be able to give on this and if you need more information, please let me know.