Gollywobbler

Hi Amanda I doubt whether Australia will relax the Balance of Family test or that it will make many other changes to Parent migration, since the now hideously expensive Contributory Parent visa is now nearly 12 years old and has proven to be so popular in spite of its cost. My widowed mother is dead now but she held a Contributory Parent visa that was granted in 2006, when they were reasonably-priced. I've lost touch with the details of Australia's visa system but I wonder whether (Aussie) Retirement Visas are still possible? If your parents are very wealthy, RVs might be a goer PROVIDED that RVs would also suit your parents tax-wise. I'd consult Alan Collett of Go Matilda about this possibility because in addition to being an experienced Registered Migration Agent, Alan is also a Chartered Accountant both in his native UK and in Australia, where he now lives. Alan is ferociously good at tax-planning etc in both jurisdictions, so I'd definitely want him aboard if I were considering a Retirement Visa for myself. There used to be a visa for Australia which involved the new immigrant investing over $1m AUD and establishing a business of his/her own in Australia. The quid pro quo was Permanent Residence in Australia but I can't remember the name of this little-used visa. There was a Briton who was in his 70s, I believe. He bought a block of flats in Brisbane, I heard. One would need to remind Alan Collett about this none-too-young Brit in order to jog Alan's memory. Australia has scrapped a number of different visas in recent years because 148 different visas was about 100 too many and I don't know what happened about the one I have in mind. Another possibility for your parents would be to think outside of the box. In their shoes, I'd be looking at an MM2H visa for Malaysia instead of Australia. The flight between Kuala Lumpur and Adelaide is usually only about 8 hours and Air Asia do the route cheaply, I believe. I think the time-zone difference between KL and AEST is only about 3 hours because there is not much difference in the longitudes of KL and Canberra respectively. MM2H is shorthand for the "Malaysia My Second Home" visa, which is a bit of a mouthful so everyone just calls it MM2H. Also, East Malaysia (think Kuching, Kinabalu etc) is closer to Australia than West Malaysia. Cheers Gill

Good for Senator Hanson-Young and very well done to Alan Collett and Johnshepherd. FWIW, I felt that Abbott was being too harsh. Also, do these various countries (including Australia and the UK) want skilled immigrants or not? Many a skilled immigrant will not make the move to the new country if doing so would tear his/her family apart. Cheers Gill

Hi Day Trader Wrussell is Westly Russell, who is a very experienced Registered Migration Agent. In general, Australia will not accept migrants who are or will be incapable of earning their own living. Therefore, everything turns on the degree and severity of the medical condition involved. Cheers Gill

Hi there Your post brings back memories for me too! My father bought shares in Tronoh Mines and hung onto them for about 30 years, I think. During the 1980s, something happened to the world price of tin. I don't know exactly what happened but my father sold his shares in Tronoh Mines (probably at the bottom of the market.) I remember thinking that if the value of his Tronoh Mines shares had plummeted, Dad might as well keep his purely for their sentimental value if nothing else. My father was an engineer. He always worked for Perak Hydro, which wa a wholly owned subsidiary of Balfour Beatty. I think BB had been responsible for building Chenderoh Dam during the 1920s. Back then, I think the British Colonials had decided that hydro-electric power was the way to go. According to Dad, reliable mains power was essential for keeping all the tin mines running and also to prevent looting during the 12 years' Emergency between 1948-1960. Some of the tin mines used dredgers but even the open-cast tin mines all needed huge pumps for the water. After the Emergency, everyone got used to an endless supply of mains electricity, I suppose. My parents retired from Malaysia in 1976, when my father was 55. (I think it was compulsory for the expats to retire once they turned 55.) However, buring the 1980s all of Perak Hydro's expat engineers were forced to retire, even though many of them were not 55. I think Perak Hydro was taken over by the Malaysian version of the National Grid. I remember seeing tin-mines every day whenever I was in Malaysia. The dredgers looked big, black and scary, I recall, so I always declined invitations to go aboard a dredger! However, I still have a lovely paper-weight, made of pure tin. One of the tin-mining companies probably gave it to Dad originally and I probably snaffled it from him! Pure tin is beautiful. It looks like sterling silver and it does not tarnish or rust but, apparently, tin is too soft for making jewellery. "Perak" means "silver" in Malay, which must be how the State got its name, I imagine. Thank you very much for bringing back such happy memories for me. Cheers Gill

FWIW, I think that anyone contemplating applying for one of the visas described by johnbshepherd should make their application as quickly as possible. I say this because DIBP has "form" about this one. A few years ago, they suddenly announced one morning that they would not acccept new applications for the [xyz] visa after midnight AEST that night. Then they actually prevented new applications after 23:30 that night. There had been no prior warning about the final 30 minutes but DIBP's feeble excuse was that they had needed to do something to their IT system. They might do the same thing again, so I would urge all prospective applicants to act very quickly. Cheers Gill

Hello Sotonborn It is certainly possible for you to apply for an sc804 whilst you are on a sc410 - it sounds as if you will be OK on the Balance of Family test? Please go towards the end of the thread in the link below (about Page 15 onward.) http://www.pomsinadelaide.com/forum/adelaide-migration-issues/4509-cheap-parent-visas-part-i.html You want the posts contributed by a user called johnbshepherd. He & his wife held sc410s originally but I believe that their sc804s avee now been granted. It might be worth sending him a Private Message. Cheers & good luck. Gill

Hi Mis I haven't been arpund lately because I suddenly suffered a pretty unpleasant stroke a few months agp & blah blah. It's not worth dwelling on the details. Also, after my beloved mother's death in Oct 2012. I went through a phase of loathing everything to do with Australia because my mother died there. Bereavement causes irrational thinking, I more or less realise now. s far as I can gather from your recent posts, you are hoping to save your parents a bit of money. However, whatever ypu do, you will not save them much money via the Contributory Parent or the Contributory Aged Parent routes, my friend. With my own mother, my sister & I decided that certainty was more important than money. We wanted Mum to know that she would be a full Permant Resident immediately, so we decided to go straight for the 143 and be done with it. That saved extra form-filling at a later date and it elso enabled my mother to hold her head up high from Day One. FWIW, I think the emotional side is every nit as important (if not more so) than the financial side. That said, I dithered around, wondering which strategy would really be best, etc. Then my sister told me firmly, "If we can apply for Permant Residence immediately then I think that that is what we should do." I reckon that it is very much easier when two headsare involved. Not always possible, I know,but useful when it is possible, my friend. Cheers Gill

Hi Westly Especially a dreadful female employed at the PVC at present. She works for DIAC, not Centrelink. However, she imagines that Policy is Law, so you can guess the rest! Cheers Gill

Hi Chris Biting the postman won't help! DIAC will communicate electronically if they can. Unlike the British Govt, the Aussie Govt seem to realise that vandalising the rain forests in order to make paper is undesirable and unnecessary. The only relevant person I whom I "know"is a man called johnbshepherd, who has made several posts on this thread. It seems to take ages before people like your Parents will hear from DIAC again. Re-read John's posts, I would suggest. Meanwhile, maybe, suggest to your Parents to leave the postman alone?! Cheers Gill

Hi Charlotte Dave Brooking replied to my e-mail and I have sent you a Private Message, so please check your PM in-box. I live in a village about 5 miles north east of Southampton town centre and about 5 miles due east of Southampton Airport, more or less. Round here, we've had more snow than I had expected. We are so close to the sea that snow doesn't usually settle etc but it has done so for the last couple of days. Southampton Airport was closed for most of the day on Friday. all the bus services into and around Southampton were also suspended etc. The local Councils seem to have had a big push to minimise the number of potential injuries and they have put lashings of grit all over the local roads and pavements, so although we have had quite bad snowfall, the whole situation has been far more sensible than it was in late 2010. There was a documentary on TV last night about the Big Freeze between January and March of 1963. I can remember some of that very vaguely because my family actually lived in Malaysia most of the time but, back then, Dad's employers (Balfour Beatty) insisted that he must spend two years in the tropics followed by six months in a temperate climate. Dad had been sent on "home leave" in England that coincided with the Big Freeze. I was enrolled in a local primary school or something for the six months (aged 5) and I think Dad probably marched me to school and back every day because I can remember piles of snow that were taller than me and they seemed to be everywhere. I got the impression that this must be "normal" for England in winter. A few years ago, I read both of Hannah Hauxwell's books avidly. Barry Cockcroft, the journo, had found Hannah Hauxwell living on her own on a remote farm up in the Yorkshire Dales. He ghost-wrote a couple of autobiographes for her and he also made a couple of TV documentaries about her, all of which were best-sellers. Cockcroft asked Miss Hauxwell about the Big Freeze in 1963 but she said that the winter of 1947 was worse. I remember wondering why Miss Hauxwell's recollection was different from Barry Cockcroft's since they could both remember 1947? I discovered why last night! Apparently the winter of 1947 affected the north of England much more than the south but it seems to have been the other way around in 1963. Cheers Gill

Hi Chris Please forgive me for butting in. I just want to confirm that Alan Collett is right. My late mother had a Contributory Parent Visa. My Aussie sister was the sponsor. I live in the UK. Mum was British. For the purposes of the Balance of Family Test, Mum's only children were my Aussie sister and I. I assembled the documents for Mum's CPV application, so the error was my fault. I included a certified copy of my birth certificate but I forgot to include a copy of my passport or any evidence about my own place of residence. I realised my error at the very last minute -just before I sent the bundle of documents off to DIAC in Australia. I decided that it would not matter. DIAC would assume that I lived in my mother's country of origin - the UK - and, as it happens, I do. If they wanted a copy of my passport, DIAC would ask for it later, I reasoned. In the end, DIAC asked no questions about me at all and they did not ask for a copy of my passport. Cheers Gill

Hi Chris.H Would it cheer you up if you had a meeting with Immigration SA in order to explain your dilemma to them? Last time I heard, a lady called Anne Johnson was the boss of Immigration SA and everyone seems to speak very highly of her. If you phoned Immigration SA, they would tell you the name of their Manager (ie the overall boss of Immigration SA.) Alternatively, if you prefer, there is nothing to prevent you from moving to NSW without bothering to discuss the move with Immigration SA if you would prefer not to discuss it with the State immigration people in either of the two States. DIAC, which is a Federal Government department, has no relevance to the issues and is not conserned about what a sc 176 holder does or where s/he goes. From what I've been reading over the last 3 years or so, the politicians in the current Labor Federal Government dislike the idea of a new immigrant moving to a particular State and then failing to use the skills that enabled him/her to be accepted for immigration to Oz in the first place. When Senator Chris Evans (Labor) was the Minister for Immigration, he used to complain about the taxi drivers around Melbourne Airport. He said that he had questioned several of the taxi drivers and had discovered that, so Evans said, many of them were highly skilled professionals who had had very good careers in their countries of origin. They had moved to Melbourne in order to join family members who already lived in Melbourne but the new immigrants had not been able to secure skilled positions in Melbourne so they were driving taxis instead, according to Evans. He thought this was "all wrong!" Logic, therefore, suggests that Evans & Co would prefer to see you doing IT work in NSW than selling ice-creams on a beach in SA! Please accept my very best wishes for your family's future in NSW. Cheers Gill

Hi All https://www.mara.gov.au/agent/ARDetails.aspx?ud=3491&BackToSearch=True&FolderID=394 Please see the link above. I do not know whether or not Ian Harrop has retired but I think that the MARA has fairly strict rules about all this. I certainly believe that Ian will probably have considered retiring because the recent changes to Australia's skilled immigation programme has decimated the volumes of work that RMAs (Registered Migration Agents) have been able to attract during the last 3 years or so. I think this is probably worse for RMAs in the UK than elsewhere because of the enfeebled state of £££ sterling against a basket of other currencies, including against $$$ AUD. Ian Harrop used to work for DIAC, as they are now called (the [Australian] Depaartment of Immigration And Citizenship. I heard that someone persuaded them to add "And" because otherwise they would have been called DIC....) I was told by another RMA that Ian Harrop came to the UK during the 1990s, to be the Principal Migration Officer at the Aussie High Commission in London. He then left DIAC - whatever its name was at the time - and became an RMA instead. I have always had masses of time for Ian Harrop. He has always been brilliant at getting a problem by the scruff of its neck and sorting it out. Kel87, I have no hesitation in recommending Ian Harrop to you. The "fees" sound quite reasonable because they are actually a description of the overall costs. Also, you have explained that you might run into problems because of your Hubby being Turkish etc. Have you come across a lady called "Professional Princess?" PP posts on the British Expat forum. That has some sort of "general chat" section, on which PP posts. She is English but her husband is Algerian. They used my friend George Lombard in Sydney. (PP calls him 'The Lombard!') Apparently, it took two years for the couple's PR visa to be granted but they got it in the end and moved to Perth. I love PP's posts because she is a very good writer with a wicked sense of humour. George Lombard always speaks very highly of Ian Harrop. George himself is also very, very good at being an RMA. I can't count the number of times that I have told visa applicants in strife, "Please relax. Thee and me will wail at Uncle George and I am sure he will be able to sort this out." He has never failed to succeed. https://www.mara.gov.au/agent/ARDetails.aspx?ud=4208&BackToSearch=True&FolderID=394 If for any reason Ian Harrop cannot help then I would recommend George Lombard instead. Otherwise, stick with Ian unless he really has retired. Cheers Gill

Hi Charlotte Again, many thanks for replying so quickly. I've heard of Armadale. I believe it is quite close to Jandakot and I remember going to a shopping mall that might have been in Armadale. Wherever the shopping mall was, there was a heat-shimmer coming off the ground when we got out of the car in the car-park for the place. It was late Feb/early March one year and I guess it must have been unusually hot in order to have produced a heat-shimmer. (Another year, I went out to Perth to visit my sister for Christmas. It was not particularly warm. Self lay on a lilo in Elaine's swimming pool, shivering, covered in goose-bumps but telling myself sternly, "There is a huge hole in the ozone layer right above Australia. Put up with this and you will get a rich chocolate suntan, however cold you might be. Think of Beauty, not Comfort!" ) Blighty has become a Third World country, only without the weather and the cuisine that can usually be found in any self-respectiing Third World country. Cameron is a clot and Gidiot is even dumber than the PM. I agree with your approach to contacting Dave Brooking. Give him a day or two to read his e-mails and this thread and then pester him, I suggest. He has a daughter so he's used to being pestered by the Monstrous Regiment of Wimmin. Meanwhile, I'm going to get cracking with Google Maps, Dave Brooking's address and YouTube, to get a better idea of where you are, where he is and what it all looks like. Cheers Gill

Hi again, Charlotte This is just to let you know that I have now sent an e-mail to Dave Brooking with a link to this thread. I have asked him to read the thread, just to get the general gist of the problem and I have asked him to pay particular attention to Westly Russell's detailed reply. If Dave goes walkabout, he always takes a laptop with him. So he will receive my e-mail within 24 hours even if he is not at home at the moment. You might want to e-mail him as well unless you have managed to reach Dave on the phone. If you want to e-mail him, the link is below: https://www.mara.gov.au/agent/ARDetails.aspx?ud=5751&BackToSearch=True&FolderID=394 Cheers Gill