Can I take my mother

[bellaboshade]

Dear Poms in Oz

I am a new user to the system -this is my first message so hope I am doing this right.

My husband is a senior Doctor at Consultant level, I am a senior nurse and we have 2 children. He has been offered a very appealing post in the Gold Coast area which we have discussed and would love to take. At present I work part time and my mother (aged 73) looks after my son aged 1 and my daughter aged 11 when she is not at school. My mother is a widow, on minimum state pension and lives in a council house. She has no savings and we subsidise her income which was usually cash in hand but more recently via bank transfer. We also pay for her to come on holiday with us and for any other things she might need. Our dilemma is we would like her to come with us but I have 2 sisters and a brother still living in England. My eldest sister is in her 50's with 2 children of her own both living at home. She currently works part time on not a very good wage but her husband earns more. they are paying for my niece to go through university and are currently funding her placement as well as paying her previous fees for a course she recently completed. They also do not have the space for mum to live with them (she stays with us 5 days a week even though she has her council home so her bills both food and electic/gas etc are reduced at her home). My elder brother, also in his 50's lives in a 1 bed council property and is on minimum wage, no savings and no spare income. My other sister in her 40's has a small 2 bed property she was able to buy from money she received as a divorce settlement - she is however on minimum wage so could not support mum. As the youngest mum spends most of her time in our home and most of her time with us rather than my brother or sisters. I have looked at the migration websites and am concerned that she will not meet the criteria as a dependent as she has other children in England, even though they could not support her. I have also read that even minimum pension does not class someone as being dependent on a relative as they have housing benefit etc. Any advice would be greatly appreciated as we would love to go but would be reluctant to go without her. Mum being mum however has told us to go regardless as she wants us to be happy.

[Petals]

Bringing aged parents to Australia has been discussed a lot on this forum and if you have a look through the threads I am sure you will find some information.

 

I do believe that that you has to be no other family in the country you are leaving and there is a very long waiting list, think I have seen on here 7 years.

 

Also another way people come is if they pay a considerable sum to the Government but then again this has also been discussed at length on this forum.

 

Have look at the threads in the Migration forum I am sue you will find a lot of information there.

[Guest AussieGold]

Good luck with your decision, and lucky you having such a great mother that you want her to come with you. Me personally if i could leave mine half way round the world, id be gone in a heartbeat, no thoughts about it :laugh:

 

AG

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Dear Poms in Oz

I am a new user to the system -this is my first message so hope I am doing this right.

My husband is a senior Doctor at Consultant level, I am a senior nurse and we have 2 children. He has been offered a very appealing post in the Gold Coast area which we have discussed and would love to take. At present I work part time and my mother (aged 73) looks after my son aged 1 and my daughter aged 11 when she is not at school. My mother is a widow, on minimum state pension and lives in a council house. She has no savings and we subsidise her income which was usually cash in hand but more recently via bank transfer. We also pay for her to come on holiday with us and for any other things she might need. Our dilemma is we would like her to come with us but I have 2 sisters and a brother still living in England. My eldest sister is in her 50's with 2 children of her own both living at home. She currently works part time on not a very good wage but her husband earns more. they are paying for my niece to go through university and are currently funding her placement as well as paying her previous fees for a course she recently completed. They also do not have the space for mum to live with them (she stays with us 5 days a week even though she has her council home so her bills both food and electic/gas etc are reduced at her home). My elder brother, also in his 50's lives in a 1 bed council property and is on minimum wage, no savings and no spare income. My other sister in her 40's has a small 2 bed property she was able to buy from money she received as a divorce settlement - she is however on minimum wage so could not support mum. As the youngest mum spends most of her time in our home and most of her time with us rather than my brother or sisters. I have looked at the migration websites and am concerned that she will not meet the criteria as a dependent as she has other children in England, even though they could not support her. I have also read that even minimum pension does not class someone as being dependent on a relative as they have housing benefit etc. Any advice would be greatly appreciated as we would love to go but would be reluctant to go without her. Mum being mum however has told us to go regardless as she wants us to be happy.

 

Hi Bellaboshade

 

Welcome to Poms in Oz.

 

It sounds to me as if your mother might indeed be considered to be dependent on you and your husband.

 

There are many myths surrounding British people and the question of financial dependency as far as the Aussie Immigration Department is concerned. They are myths.

 

The best test, I suspect, is whether or not your mother would become eligible for an Aged Dependent Relative visa once you were settled in Oz. If she would be, then it follows that she must also be dependent on you at the moment because those are the facts upon which you would be relying. If the facts are that she is indeed dependent on you then there is no reason why you should not include her in your own application for a skilled visa.

 

A friend of mine, who now lives in Brisbane, is a Nurse, like yourself. Her mother had been widowed about 10 years before her daughter and son-in-law moved to Oz. The mother had sold her house and moved into her daughter's house when the mother was widowed. She had some small savings (about £5,000 or so) and she was getting a full State pension in the UK.

 

The daughter used a Registered Migration Agent who is based in the UK. This chap made a total hash of everything to do with the mother, with the result that the DIAC Case Officer threatened to refuse the daughter's application for a skilled visa unless the mother was withdrawn from it.

 

So the mother was withdrawn from the application. That then led to the daughter and I discussing whether or not the mother would be eligible to apply for an Aged Dependent Relative visa in due course. She could not apply for Parent migration because in addition to her daughter in Oz, she has two sons who live in the UK but only her daughter ever provides any financial support.

 

So once the daughter had been living in Oz for a while, I introduced her to Nigel Dobbie, who is a genuine expert in this field of Law, not just a semi-trained, semi-skilled wannabe with it.

 

Dobbie and Devine Immigration Lawyers Pty Ltd

 

Together, the daughter and I explained to Nigel that we were worried because there seems to be a huge rumour that the British Welfare State somehow prevents a Briton from ever being an Aged Dependent Relative.

 

Nigel said that this was nonsense. He reckoned that what happens is that people read the words about "basic" food, clothing and shelter and assume that it means that the Aged Dependent Relly has to be destitute without the financial support of the person in Oz. Nigel said that nothing in the relevant legislation requires that the Aged Dependent Relly has to be destitute without the support.

 

Nigel was undoubtedly right because about 3 months later, the case of Mrs Parr was reported in the Migration Review Tribunal:

 

0800685 [2008] MRTA 981 (8 October 2008)

 

It is possible that Nigel acted for Mrs Parr - or that he is chummy with whichever other lawyer did act for her in the MRT. As you can see when you read the case, the MRT relied on the UK's official Poverty Line figures, produced by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

 

There was another MRT case, about a Malaysian lady who had applied for an Aged Dependent Relative visa. The Malaysian lady's case had been dealt with about 9-12 months before Mrs Parr's case and again, the MRT had relied on the official Poverty Line figures for Malaysia.

 

The 2007 IFS Report for the UK is below:

 

http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/14725/1/14725.pdf

 

There are a couple of typing errors in the MRT report about Mrs Parr. The MRT Report puts http://www.ifs.orq,uk/bns/bn73.pdf. The comma should be a full stop and "orQ" ought to be "org." If you correct the typist's careless mistakes, the hyperlink then works though I have used a different hyperlink to pull up the same report above.

 

I know very little about the Institute for Fiscal Studies. I vaguely think that they do the official Poverty Line report every other year, in about May. I remember a BBC Report in May 2009, in which they said that the latest IFS Poverty Line report said that at the time in the UK, you needed a disposable income of not less than £158 per week in order to be on the official Poverty Line in the UK. If you were living on less than that then you were living below the Poverty Line in the UK, apparently. That was in May 2009.

 

I remember hearing this on the news and thinking, "That information does not surprise me since most people with a brain do realise that the UK has become a Third World country as far as Poverty is concerned."

 

However in your mother's case, in your shoes I would phone the Institute for Fiscal Studies, get hold of somebody intelligent there and find out how all this works:

 

The Institute For Fiscal Studies

 

I find their website very difficult to follow, probably because I know so little about how the IFS work, what they actually do, who they really are and so forth. In your shoes, I would consult Nigel Dobbie in Sydney as well.

 

It seems to me that if your mother would become eligible for an Aged Dependent Relative visa in due course then it ought to be possible to include her in any skilled visa application by you instead, though I would recommend that you consult Nigel about this and see what he thinks.

 

Does this help, at all?

 

Cheers

 

Gill

[bellaboshade]

Dear All

Thank you so much for the helpful information - my husband and I are speaking to a migration expert in oz but will also get in touch with the gentleman you suggested

Will keep you posted