Guest ricslastresort Posted October 20, 2010 Share Posted October 20, 2010 hi everyone. some advice please. My partner and I arrived in oz two years ago on a 457 visa (employer sponsored) working for a government department. we made the decision to stay and apply for permanent residence. My partner became pregnant before we started the process but just before the birth my employer submitted the employer nomination so that we could get it started following birth. We understood Kate could not complete the medical until after the birth so we held off. Our two beautiful boys were born a fortnight ago but one was born with downs syndrome, which was unexpected. We are now becoming aware that we may be rejected for our perm residence because of this. It seems the lad has only been on the planet for a week and already he's been discriminated against. All seems a bit 1970's to me. Has anyone any experience of this or advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
byrned Posted October 20, 2010 Share Posted October 20, 2010 hi everyone.some advice please. My partner and I arrived in oz two years ago on a 457 visa (employer sponsored) working for a government department. we made the decision to stay and apply for permanent residence. My partner became pregnant before we started the process but just before the birth my employer submitted the employer nomination so that we could get it started following birth. We understood Kate could not complete the medical until after the birth so we held off. Our two beautiful boys were born a fortnight ago but one was born with downs syndrome, which was unexpected. We are now becoming aware that we may be rejected for our perm residence because of this. It seems the lad has only been on the planet for a week and already he's been discriminated against. All seems a bit 1970's to me. Has anyone any experience of this or advice. Not me personally, but I remember a case not so longer ago in the media, about a doctor here who had been living and working here, had some trouble regarding his visa or his sons visa due to his son, I am pretty sure the child was downs, www.dailymail.co.uk/.../Doctor-denied-Australian-visa-Downs-Syndrome-son-permanent-drain-taxpayers.html see this link, he eventually was given the right to stay, Congratulations on the birth of your boys you must be both very proud. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest siamsusie Posted October 20, 2010 Share Posted October 20, 2010 hi everyone.some advice please. My partner and I arrived in oz two years ago on a 457 visa (employer sponsored) working for a government department. we made the decision to stay and apply for permanent residence. My partner became pregnant before we started the process but just before the birth my employer submitted the employer nomination so that we could get it started following birth. We understood Kate could not complete the medical until after the birth so we held off. Our two beautiful boys were born a fortnight ago but one was born with downs syndrome, which was unexpected. We are now becoming aware that we may be rejected for our perm residence because of this. It seems the lad has only been on the planet for a week and already he's been discriminated against. All seems a bit 1970's to me. Has anyone any experience of this or advice. :hug: Congratulations on the birth of your two precious sons. I think I would be contacting George Lombard Contact Us | George Lombard Consultancy Pty. Ltd. who has much experience in this field. I sincerely hope you manage to come up with a solution very quickly, I wouldnt despair yet!! Very best wishes to you and your dear little family. Susie x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gollywobbler Posted October 20, 2010 Share Posted October 20, 2010 hi everyone.some advice please. My partner and I arrived in oz two years ago on a 457 visa (employer sponsored) working for a government department. we made the decision to stay and apply for permanent residence. My partner became pregnant before we started the process but just before the birth my employer submitted the employer nomination so that we could get it started following birth. We understood Kate could not complete the medical until after the birth so we held off. Our two beautiful boys were born a fortnight ago but one was born with downs syndrome, which was unexpected. We are now becoming aware that we may be rejected for our perm residence because of this. It seems the lad has only been on the planet for a week and already he's been discriminated against. All seems a bit 1970's to me. Has anyone any experience of this or advice. # Hello ricslastresort Welcome to Poms in Oz. It is worse than 1970s. The attitude of the Australian Government goes back to the cave with issues of Disability and Immigration to Oz. I'll wager that Caveman probably had a more civilised attitude towards the whole thing, as well. The Joint Standing Committee on Migration has conducted a Public Inquiry into this issue very recently, resulting in the JSCM's Report called "Enabling Australia." http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/mig/disability/report.htm If you click on the headings on the page above, you can find the written Submissions to the public inquiry and you can also find the Hansards of the Public Hearings. Dr Douglas is the Chief Medical Officer of the Commonwealth. He gave evidence in the Public Hearings in Canberra on 24th Feb 2010 and 17th March 2010. Down Syndrome has caused more controversy in the field of migration to Oz than any other single Health condition has ever caused. Almost all of the high profile cases have involved children with Down Syndrome, the most recent of which was the case concerning Lukas Moeller, the teenaged son of Dr Bernhard Moeller. The child at the centre of the landmark Robinson litigation in 2005 also has Down Syndrome. Both with Dr Moeller and with Mrs Robinson, the families were eventually granted Permanent Residency in Oz late in 2008, by the then Minister for Immigration using his own, personal powers with which to intervene and to grant the visas. More recently, the JSCM has found that the Health requirement for migration to Oz conflicts with Australia's international obligations under the UN's Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (the CRPD, for short.) The JSCM has recommended radical reform of Australia's immigration legislation with regard to the Health requirement for migration. However the JSCM's Report was presented to the Australian Government on 21st June 2010. The General Election was called about a month later. A new Minister for Immigration has now taken over from Senator Chris Evans. The new Minister, Mr Chris Bowen, has been told to focus on the problem of the Boat People for the time being. Therefore, as yet, the Australian Government has not responded to the JSCM's Report. Some of the JSCM's 18 recommendations could be implemented immediately. They are purely administrative matters which would not require any new legislation. However, even changing those requirements would require the green light from Minister Bowen, who is preoccupied with the Boat People at the moment. Some of the other recommendations would require changes to the legislation in the event that Bowen says that he wants the changes to be implemented. You have said this: My partner and I arrived in oz two years ago on a 457 visa (employer sponsored) working for a government department. we made the decision to stay and apply for permanent residence. Are you employed by the Federal Government, a State Government or a local authority, please? Also, which State are you in? Thirdly, which visa are you and your employer considering for you, please? Are you considering the onshore sc 856 ENS visa or the onshore sc 857 RSMS visa, please? If not, which visa have you applied for/are thinking about applying for? This is important because all of the 8 State/Territories have now signed up to an idea called the Health State Waiver where an Aussie employer is sponsoring the visa applicant for PR. Basically, the relevant State can step in in this situation and can say that it (the State involved) is willing to accept the costs involved in allowing [your baby] to have Permanent Residency in Oz. In May 2009, DIAC advised the Aussie Senate that DIAC reckoned that every State would put a financial ceiling on the amount of the costs that it would be willing to carry on behalf of the family concerned. DIAC thought that the ceiling imposed by the State Governments would be around $100,000 per family, per State. $100,000 would be better than nothing. On your own, at the moment, the ceiling would be $21,000, so the State Health Waiver would buy you almost 5 times as much money to play with, if you see what I mean. However it is all more complicated than I am describing in this reply. There is no way round the fact that it is complicated. I think the biggest complication at the moment probably lies in working out the degree and severity of the Down Syndrome in the case of your newborn son. Given that he is so young, I would think that measuring his intellectual ability is probably impossible? I'm a lawyer who has never had any direct involvement in anything to do with Down Syndrome. I vaguely understand that DS can cause various physical problems as well: Down syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia As I understand it, many of the children born with DS can have heart problems that require surgery when the child is very young but I believe that once the surgery is done, the heart problem is then mended for the rest of the person's life. As far as I know, the cost of the surgery would not prevent your child from obtaining PR in Oz. It is a one-off cost and that is then the end of the costs for any heart problem, I believe. I don't know whether it is possible to make any accurate predictions about a person's likely level of mental ability via studying his physical symptoms alone. In the high profile cases, the child has been at least 8 years old by the time that the problems with the visa meds began, so it was possible to do IQ tests etc. From those it was possible for the MOC to predict whether or not the child would be likely to need special assistance at school, whether anybody was likely to be eligible for any sort of Disability or Carer payments relating to the child and so on. Centrelink - assists people to become self-sufficient and supports those in need Entitlement to Centrelink payments counts as "community services," which in turn counts as "significant cost" for the purposes of the legislation dealing with the Health requirement for migration. "Significant cost" has been defined as being $21,000 during the person's first 5 years as a Permanent Resident of Australia but this is a purely administrative figure that was set in 1998/1999 and has never been revisited or revised, which fact should cause DIAC to hang their heads in shame but needless to say it does not have that effect on any of the Suits who run DIAC. What George Lombard could do for you is limited. He could get his own doctor to review what your child's own medical experts say about his condition. (George has a GP who works as a part time member of his own team.) Dr Elena, working for George, might say that she knows Dr XYZ in Sydney (a doctor who specialises in looking after infants with DS.) George might recommend getting Dr XYZ to review the paperwork and possibly getting Dr XYZ to examine your child in the flesh, depending on your own whereabouts in Oz etc. However, neither George or anybody close to George can make any accurate predictions about which way the MOC would be likely to jump about your newborn infant and his medical condition. The best solution, by several miles, would be if the specialist medics looking after your child were furnished with the relevant Guidance Notes for the MOC, which were due to be "published" (ie hidden on Legend) in July 2010. Dr Douglas assured the JSCM that these new Guidance Notes (all 19 of them) would be hidden - I mean published - on Legend by no later than July 2010. Dr Douglas also made that assurance to me, privately, in April 2010. In September 2010, I was told that the 19 new Guidance Notes have not been hidden on Legend as yet and the Registered Migration Agent who told me this also said that she has heard a rumour that DIAC's Suits have overruled Dr Douglas and have decided not to publish - or even semi publish - these new Guidance Notes at all. I am told that DIAC have decided to whinge about the "cost" of placing documents that the Australian tax-payer has paid some $3 million AUD for into the public domain, where it belongs. The Law Institute of Victoria made a fuss about this to the JSCM and the JSCM have recommended that these new Guidance Notes for the MOC should not be hidden on the subscription-only Legend but that they should be placed properly into the public domain, via putting the new Guidance Notes onto the DIAC website. The JSCM are unequivocal about the idea that this is what ought to be done. It is the Recommendation at Paragraph 4.68 on Page 76 of the Enabling Australia report, below: http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/mig/disability/report/Final%20report.pdf For a list of the Guidance Notes which should "be available to potential visa applicants," according to the JSCM, please see the Table on Page 64 of the document below: http://www.anao.gov.au/uploads/documents/2006-07_Audit_Report_37.pdf If all 19 of the new Guidance Notes were indeed in the public domain, obviously it would be easy enough to work out which ones might be relevant in the case of your child. In the absence of these Guidance Notes, no doctor except the MOC can explain what the MOC is likely to say about your child. To some extent you can look for these new Guidance Notes by yourself. You can do it vy going to your local State Library or to one of the University Libraries that has access to Legend. LEGENDcom Please click on the link to "subscription types and costs." If you are willing to pay a hefty amount of money, you could buy a subscription to Legend for yourself, for that matter. However George Lombard has access to Legend as part of his professional library so it might be cheaper if you simply rely on him, rather than trying to do the whole thing by yourself. That is enough for the moment, I think. I don't want you to get sensory overload with all of this. Cheers Gill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Eug2011 Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 Hi everyone. I decided not to create a new topic as my question is related to the Guidance Notes discussed earlier on. As I understand a medical officer is to assess probable health care costs in connection to applicants' “disease or condition”. The question is - does the word "condition" refers to previous medical history as opposed to current disease or disability? What I mean is that if a young person was sectioned for a month and then was discharged with a diagnosis of psychopathy; however, after being under medical supervision for several years that person has recovered and at present time has no restrictions for driving/weapons possessing and so on. Will that person be considered having a "condition" that potentially can cause to fail the health test? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Eug2011 Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 Does anyone have a clue? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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