Guest Posted May 17, 2010 Share Posted May 17, 2010 Hi Everyone, I need some advice or some info from those of you who have been issued a permenant visa offshore. My hubby was issued a permanent visa on the 21.12.2009. I planned on departing in September tihis year and he planned to follow once I found work in Sydney. Things were progressing well at home - our savings are at a good level, I started sending some boxes to Australia and was considering booking my flight. I resigned at work in April, planning to work until the end of July. Unfortunately we were hit with a bad surprise in April/May. He had been sick with (what we thought was) the flu since February this year. Following many doctors appointments, a CT scan and a biopsy, he has been recently diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma (!!!). This completely shocked us as who thinks about cancer when going to the doctor with suspected flu. He starts with Chemo on Thursday and will have 12 sessions, once a fortnight. Following 6 months, the two tumours found should be mostly or all gone, should his body respond well to treatment. There is apparantely a 90-95% cure rate for his age group so we are both trying to stay as optimistic and positive as possible. We had summer holidays planned for August but these have obviously been cancelled. We are trying to work out what do to with his PR visa. He needs to enter Australia by the 13th of January and this date can not be altered or extended by immigration under any circumstances - we expect that he should be able to travel by then. We have decided to stay in Switzerland (where we are at the moment) a little longer, until he is in remission. Should we travel into Australia in December or early January is this enough to activate his permanent visa? We'll stay for a few weeks holidays. Will he be able to leave Australia for a year or two and then return again or will he need a different visa while he is out of the country? After so much effort and time required to get his PR visa granted, we don't want to give up on this too!! Have any of you entered Australia to activate your PR visa and then left and returned permanently at a later date? Would appreciate some further information if possible. :confused::sad: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
calNgary Posted May 17, 2010 Share Posted May 17, 2010 Hi I am sorry to hear about your husband,wish him lots of luck with his treatment. To activate the PR visa you need to pass through passport control, the length of time you stay once you have done is open (to an extent) meaning you could walk through customs, grab a coffee and hop on the next plane back if you wanted,lol, but i think a 2 week break is ideal and will probably give you a much deserved break. Hope this helps a little Cal x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MicheleW Posted May 17, 2010 Share Posted May 17, 2010 I am so sorry to hear about your husband's diagnosis. We are just waiting for the 2 year all clear for my partner's Hodgkin's Lymphoma prior to applying for a spousal visa. If you want to talk to or sound off to anybody about what you as the partner is going through then PM me. I know that it is a very stressful time for you at the moment and I don't want to add to it, but DIAC states that if there are any change of circumstances after the visa has been granted and prior to it being activated you have to notify them. Unfortunately they then have the right to cancel that visa. Once again, I am so sorry to hear your news. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 17, 2010 Share Posted May 17, 2010 Thanks Cal. I thought the same but wasn't 100% sure. I really hope he is feeling better soon. Cancer is a horrible illness. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 17, 2010 Share Posted May 17, 2010 I am so sorry to hear about your husband's diagnosis. We are just waiting for the 2 year all clear for my partner's Hodgkin's Lymphoma prior to applying for a spousal visa. If you want to talk to or sound off to anybody about what you as the partner is going through then PM me. I know that it is a very stressful time for you at the moment and I don't want to add to it, but DIAC states that if there are any change of circumstances after the visa has been granted and prior to it being activated you have to notify them. Unfortunately they then have the right to cancel that visa. Once again, I am so sorry to hear your news. Hi Michele. Thank you for your comment, I do appreciate it. I will be contacting DIAC soon, just waiting until he has gone through some rounds of Chemotherapy (ADVD) first. I think I will be contacting you soon - I am not sure what to expect after each treatment and how I can best help support him. It just all took us by surprise. He does have another health issue which we received a health waiver for after a long and complicated process. Lymphoma came as a complete shock and completely out of the blue and is completely unrelated to his preexisting condition. Considering the assets we have in Australia though, should they try and cancel his PR visa there will be a long fight from our end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perez Posted May 18, 2010 Share Posted May 18, 2010 Firstly, I'm so sorry to hear about the bad time you're having and wish you all the best for your husband's treatment and a speedy recovery. I think once a perm visa is activated, you generally have 5 years to come and go freely... after that you need a resident return visa if you're going to leave Australia... It's entirely your choice, but if it were down to me, i'd be tempted to go on holiday (thereby activating the visa), without having discussions with DIAC about your partner's illness. I assume you'd be wanting to go permanently once he gets the all clear anyway, so this shouldn't really make a difference to them. What you wouldn't want is for them to cancel your visa as you'd then have to go through the process (and costs) of applying again in future. You might however want to think about healthcare implications - if any treatment were required in future, how would you be covered by Medicare once in Oz? If you're going to take private health insurance then you would have a waiting period (I'm not 100% sure but I think typically it'd be 12 months) before you can receive benefits for conditions deemed to be pre-existing. Once again, all the best. B Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 18, 2010 Share Posted May 18, 2010 Firstly, I'm so sorry to hear about the bad time you're having and wish you all the best for your husband's treatment and a speedy recovery. I think once a perm visa is activated, you generally have 5 years to come and go freely... after that you need a resident return visa if you're going to leave Australia... It's entirely your choice, but if it were down to me, i'd be tempted to go on holiday (thereby activating the visa), without having discussions with DIAC about your partner's illness. I assume you'd be wanting to go permanently once he gets the all clear anyway, so this shouldn't really make a difference to them. What you wouldn't want is for them to cancel your visa as you'd then have to go through the process (and costs) of applying again in future. You might however want to think about healthcare implications - if any treatment were required in future, how would you be covered by Medicare once in Oz? If you're going to take private health insurance then you would have a waiting period (I'm not 100% sure but I think typically it'd be 12 months) before you can receive benefits for conditions deemed to be pre-existing. Once again, all the best. B Thank you for your comment, I really do appreciate it. It was so horrible when we found out the news. We were ready to go. I resigned, money saved, boxes sent (to family), his family informed, household clutter reduced to basics - then this hit us. I feel horrible that he has to go through this. He has already been through so much in his life! It just doesn't seem fair. He is very determined - if he is well enough, we'll be travelling over for a holiday in December or January to activate his visa and to see my family. I've missed them and Australia so much! I haven't been back in over 3 years as we were saving all our money for the eventual move. We have worked damned hard for him to get this visa (it took almost 10 months even though he has me as an Australian spouse!!!!) and to create valuable assets in Australia, we will not allow anyone to take them from us. I will make sure he applies for Medicare whilst there on holidays (but won't use it, if he needs anything in Sydney, we'll use his private health cover from Switzerland) and we'll also be applying for Australian private medical insurance, either with Medibank or HCF. There is a 12 month waiting period for pre-existing medical conditions with private medical insurance companies - we'll pay the insurance and continue to live here in Switzerland until he is completely better and gets the all clear. We do not wish to burden the Australian health system and he wants to be strong enough and healthy enough to work and live before making such a move. We've (thankfully) had to look into health care implications during the whole visa application process because he had a different pre-existing condition which he had to be granted a health waiver for. Thank you all for your comments. For now we have to focus on him getting better and then we'll deal with the rest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sharron pickett Posted May 19, 2010 Share Posted May 19, 2010 Hi ya, I hope your husband is doing good, my mum had the same cancer 9 yrs ago, and she had the treatment and is doing great. Its known as a good cancer, easy to cure. My mum is back to normal, doing everything just as before. Don't give up your visa, activate it if you can by having a holiday, and if you need to then you can always apply for a resident return visa . I had to do this, and with compelling reasons a 3 month or 5 yr RRV can be granted. I wish you all the best, your husband will be fine x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted January 25, 2011 Share Posted January 25, 2011 Hi All Just wanted to give you all an update. Hubby finished his treatment at the end of October (he was already in complete remission from 2 months before but the doctor recommended he continue the further 2 months treatment) and we went to Sydney. A few hours before we got on the plane, my father in law told us that he has cancer (prostate cancer) but we left anyway - he could have told us earlier about his illness and we were both in desperate need of a trip away! It'd been a hard year and I felt like if we didn't leave, we'd go crazy. I asked him if he wanted to change our tickets and that he come back earlier for his dad but he declined as his dad was delaying his treatment anyway. :-/ This topic should be saved for a different post. Since he still wanted to go to Sydney, I told him to just switch off and focus on himself for the next 4 weeks. He deserved it! What an amazing trip we had! When we went through passport control, they took my husband to the immigration office i.e. we waited outside of the office. I was concerned there may be something wrong but all they did was look him up on the computer and stamp his passport. HE DID IT! He activated his visa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We had an amazing holiday, the summer weather did him the world of good. We also visited a specialist there so that we know who'll be treating him in future. We left 4 weeks later where they did the same with his passport (took it for stamping) and returned to Zurich, Switzerland. I am so glad with how well he is doing! His hair started growing back when we were on vacation and his face returned back to it's normal colour. He is doing much better! Ugh, it's so hard being back in Zurich now with the freezing winter weather! We hope to go by the end of the year if he is still in remission in August (1 year from date of complete remission 2010) and if nothing else goes wrong (i.e. hopefully my father in law will be stable). Weeeeeeeeee. Fingers crossed for Oz! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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