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Government Announces Plan for New Temporary Parent Visas
The Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Alex Hawke, has issued a media release which states that the Turnbull Government intends to introduce a new "temporary sponsored parent visa" in 2017.
According to the media release, the new visa will allow "Australians" (presumably the typical formula of citizens, permanent residents and eligible New Zealand citizens?) to sponsor their parents to stay in Australia for up to 5 years.
To which one can only say: "About time!" and "Hallelujah!!!!"
Surely, there is room for improvement of the current framework, which offers the limited and unattractive choices of standard parent visas with capping, queuing and interminable processing times which make these visas practically useless, and the hugely expensive contributory parent options.
The media release notes that the government recognises that migrant communities face pressures through the separation of children from parents and grandchildren from grandparents!!!
It's great that the government can see this - no kidding that families need and want to be together.
One can only hope that these visas will be open and readily accessible, and that there won't be some criterion which will enable the Department to refuse them on subjective and arbitrary grounds. One can always hope, right?
Speaking from my own experience, this type of visa would be very very welcome. I had a case just this year where I had clients, both doctors in Tasmania, who wanted the husband's parents to visit for 2 weeks from the UAE so that they could see their infant grandson. The parents who wanted to visit were Iraqi nationals who were longtime residents of the UAE, and had very stable employment and family and financial ties there. Nonetheless, their applications for family-sponsored visitor visas were refused on the basis that they allegedly didn't satisfy the dreaded genuine temporary entrant requirement as the Department concluded that there was no assurance they'd be allowed to return to the UAE (even though they had residency status there).
Crazy and harsh, right?
I'll bet some of you have your own horror stories to tell.
News flash to the Department: there are a lot of parents in various countries around the world who would want to come to Australia to spend time with their children and grandchildren, who have their own lives in their home countries, and who aren't thinking of surreptitiously overstaying their visas or burdening the Australian health care system.
So hurrah! The government's announcement is welcome!
And the new visa pathway for parents can't come soon enough!
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Comments
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Thursday, 29 September 2016AAT review?
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Wednesday, 28 September 2016
they need to be non-african
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Monday, 26 September 2016
I think the end result is good but the motive for the proposed 5 year visa is to reduce the number of parent visa granted yearly and to increase the 2nd stage monetary contribution for contributory parent visa.
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Wednesday, 28 September 2016
Agree and I think the contributory parent PR visa will skyrocket to $300-400K.
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Tuesday, 27 September 2016
What would be the cost for such visa?
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Tuesday, 27 September 2016
A client's parents are citizens of Somalia but are permanent residents of Dubai, their home for the last 30 yeard together with their 7 other children and families. When the father retired from his Dubai job of 30 years the Australian citizen son sponsored them on a 6-mo visitor via but to my horror they were refused because the Case Officer claim the parents may circumvent the laws and stay in Australia because of current situation in their home country. Ridiculous when they have not been there for 30 years!
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Thursday, 29 September 2016
Of course allowing parents to stay for longer periods of time is a positive. However, I also foresee numerous problems. Allowing parents to remain in Australia for 5 years will ultimately lead to parents feeling settled and comfortable in Australia. Grandchildren will become attached to their grandparents and children will also enjoy having that connection. So what happens after 5 years? Everyone's lives will be turned upside down!! Will they be granted another 5 years?
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Saturday, 01 October 2016
Great Idea.health cover will be an issue unless they can obtain travel insurance
How many 80 year olds will qualify for health cover?
Will the health criteria prevent them from accessing medical he visa
Immigration blog
A client who is a national of Democratic Republic of Congo, whose first visitor visa was refused because of failing to satisfying genuine temporary entrance criteria. Her second student visa application, sponsored by her brother in Australia was refused on the same ground. Now the case handed over to me, I need to figure out a way to see if her visa can be granted.