Cheap Parent Visas Part I

[Guest mr luvpants]

Sorry that I have been a bit quiet on this thread but I have now have some news.

 

We sent off the in laws 804 application with a letter explaining that although we have only been in Australia for 18 months we class ourselves settled.We also sent in loads of paperwork to "prove" we are settled. The in laws also wanted a bridging visa B so that they can go back to the UK and get sorted. Well they are meant to be going back to the UK next Sunday and today telephoned DIAC to find out if they needed to extend their flight. Well its all good news! Their application has been lodged and their bridging visa A is on hold until March 2013 which is when their tourist visa runs out. As soon as their TV runs out (March 2013 or after they have have stayed for 3 months) they have to telephone DIAC and the bridging visa A comes into force. So they can go back to the UK next Sunday and take as long as they want and have to be here by March 2013 at the latest.

Thanks everyone for your help.

 

JOHN

[Guest sumon]

Hi,

 

I have applied for my Parent Visa 103 sometimes 2005. I have got my Queue date on 27 Dec 2006.

I been tracking recently on queue calculator the progress of my parent visa.

here is the stat.

[TABLE=width: 519]

[TR]

[TD]Check Date

[/TD]

[TD]Number of Applicant Ahead

[/TD]

[TD]Year to Go

[/TD]

[TD]Visa Per Year

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: right]20/09/2011

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]4660

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]3.33

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]1400

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: right]23/03/2012

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]3580

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]2.39

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]1500

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: right]23/04/2012

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]3400

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]2.27

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]1500

[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[TD][/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD=align: right]23/05/2012

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]3190

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]2.13

[/TD]

[TD=align: right]1500

[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

 

Can any one advice when my parents will come here? I have call them then they email me back saying ther are currently processing May 2005 queue date. So does anyone has any clue when they will process my parent visa and when they will finally come here . They are on 103 via catagory with queue date 27/12/2006.

Edited June 12, 2012 by sumon

[Gollywobbler]

Hi Sumon

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/migrants/family/parent-visa-processing-priorities.htm

 

Please read what DIAC say in the link above.

 

I have just checked the Queue Calculator for you. According to that, there are approximately 2,890 applicants ahead of your Parents. At the moment, DIAC say they are granting about 1,500 Parent sc 103 visas each year. I suspect that this means that your own Parents' visas will probably be granted sometime between 01 July 2014 and 30 June 2015.

 

Vheers

 

Gill

[linda]

Hi Gill

 

I'm afraid I am one of the people you referred to in your recent post who regularly reads this thread but never says a word! Well here goes!

 

Cutting a long and probably, to everyone else, boring, story short my daughter married her Australian husband 10 years ago and last year after a couple of false starts they finally emigrated with their children. My daughter has a spouse visa and is a PR.The long term plan was always that I would join them. I'm ok with the balance of family test as I have two children one here one there! Initially when talked about it the cost of the CPV would have been around 20,000 pounds for me which I could have managed using the funds from the sale of the house. In the intervening years I met a lovely man and remarried which eventually was one of the factors which made my daughter feel that she could leave. My husband married me in full knowledge of 'the plan' and was more than happy to go with it. However there were now two of us to consider and as we all know visa costs keep rising and house values keep falling so we were really worried as to whether or not we could afford the move.

 

Then I discovered this thread which totally changed everything! I read and re-read the posts and the links they contained and I started to think that there might still be a way. I thought the only problem would be the practicalities of dealing with the house etc.

 

I know it's been said many times Gill but you are a total inspiration. Instead if turning your back and forgetting all of this after so much hassle sorting out your own mother you have carried on giving excellent advice and help to so many people. Thank You

 

I will be 64.5 next May ( Australian pension age for my date of birth) and therefore officcially aged. My husband is 65. Every box was ticked for the onshore APV until 2 months ago my husband was dignosed with Congestive Heart Failure. This is appaprently a blanket diagnosis for various different diseases of the heart. He is responding well to medication and as yet there is no mention of surgery.

 

But it does now seem that our visa application, whether we are able to stretch to a CAPV or go with an APV, would not be successful. Also there is the ongoing cost of prescriptions and medical bills to consider.

 

According to the DIAC the most common conditions which mean automatic visa application failure are HIV, Intellectual Impairment, Cancer and Renal disease or failure. There is no mention of heart disease except as a consequence of Obesity. In the case of Mrs Thyagaraja as well as heart disease she had diabetes and renal disease both of which are referred to in Para 4005 ©(ii)(A). I have tied myself in knots reading the Health Waiver regulations.

 

I know you have said before Gill that you are not a doctor but I would really appreciate your take on our situation. Its come as a real blow.

 

Best regards

Linda

[Gollywobbler]

Hi Linda

 

Welcome to this thread. It is really good to have you aboard.

 

Just to satisfy my own curiosity, please, who is (or was) Mrs Thyagaraja? She is not one of the "well known names" as far as PIC 4005 is concerned, so I'm wondering how you know about this lady? If you can provide any links to anything relevant, I would be most interested, please.

 

With regard to yourself and New Hubby (NH) has he fathered any children of his own, please? You have not said whether you and he, together, would still be OK on the Balance of Family Test. Please check this via the link below:

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/migrants/family/balance-family.htm

 

With regard to NH's medical condition, absolutely NO condition acts as an automatic bar to entry to Australia. Even active TB only acts as a bar until the doctors are satisfied that the TB has been dealt with and cured. The treatment for TB seems to take several months but, nowadays, it is routinely cured with antibiotics so it is no longer the huge risk to public health that it used to be in Australia and still is in some other countries in the world. Since the disease has largely been eradicated in Australia, the Aussie Chief Medical Officer is merely determined to keep the disease at bay in Australia, which is a reasonable enough desire.

 

"Congestive Heart Failure" is NOT a barrier just because a visa applicant suffers from it. It is not a risk to public health. The treatment for the problem is not necessarily in short supply in Australia, unlike, say, donor organs for transplant or the availability of kidney dialysis services. It can be that the patient only needs drugs and a check-up from a specialist cardiologist just once or twice a year. If that is all that is likely to be required for the foreseeable future then there is no reason why the condition should prevent migration. It just depends on what the visa applicant's own cardiologist says and what the Medical Officer of the Commonwealth thinks, based on the evidence provided by the examining doctor (the visa applicant's cardiologist.)

 

Are you aware that, a couple of years ago, there was an important Public Inquiry in Australia? If not, please see the links below:

 

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=mig/disability/report.htm

 

Ostensibly the JSCM had only been tasked with considering "disability." However, the migration legislation is based on the "medical model" of disability, lumping it in with disease, in effect. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (known as the CRPD) uses the "social model" of disability instead. Australia has now ratified the CRPD, so the Health requirement for migration now conflicts with the CRPD in some cases. The JCSM concluded that the migration legislation does need to be altered but, so far, there has been no official Government Response to the JSCM's Report entitled Enabling Australia.

 

Because it was impossible to separate "disability" and "disease," owing to the way that the migration legislation is worded, it is just as useful for you to read some of the evidence to the JSCM as it would be if you were the parent of a child with, say, Down Syndrome. Much of the evidence was written evidence, in the form of Submissions to the JSCM:

 

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=mig/disability/subs.htm

 

I think you might find it useful to start with DIAC's own Submission, which is #66. It provides a better idea of the workings of the Health requirement than the DIAC website provides, imho.

 

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=mig/disability/hearings.htm

 

Two of the Public Hearings were also particularly useful. Both of them were held in Canberra, in February and March 2010. Dr Paul Douglas is DIAC's Chief Medical Officer. He gave evidence in person at the two Public Hearings in Canberra and the way he described the whole thing was particularly interesting, in my view. (Needless to say, I can't give you the links to the official transcripts right now because the APH website only half-works when it is being maintained, which seems to happen most weekends!)

 

When you have time, though, a quick wade through the things I have mentioned would be worthwhile for you, I reckon.

 

There have been several cases before the Migration Review Tribunal in which the Health requirement for migration (PIC 4005, mainly) has been in dispute in the case of a person who wants to migrate to Australia. The relevant case reports are published via AustLii, which is another website that never works wonderfully well at weekends!

 

Please don't waste time looking for anything to do with the Health Waiver. The Waiver provisions are not contained in PIC 4005, which is the one that governs all the different types of Parent visas. The DIAC Submission that I mentioned above contains a verbatim copy & paste of PIC 4005 in one of the appendices. The Health Waiver that you have read about is contained in PIC 4007, which is relevant to Partner Visas, Child Visas and perhaps other visas besides but it is not relevant to Parent Visas. (PIC = Public Interest Criterion. The various PICs are set out in Schedule 4 of the Migration Regulations 1994 (as amended) [continually] and then linked back to provisions in the Migration Act 1958.)

 

So - in short: the fact that NH has been diagnosed with congestive heart failure will not automatically prevent him from getting a visa in due course. It depends on the cause of the heart condition, the likely prognosis and so on. It is nonsense to believe that only Superman is able to get past PIC 4005.

 

Whether you should consider CAPVs or the non-contributory Aged Parent visas described in this thread is another matter. I'll do some more droning about that in a minute but just at the minute, I'm hungry so I'm off to raid the fridge for a while!

 

Cheers

 

Gill

[linda]

Hi Gill

 

Thank you so much for getting back to me. I feel a lot more positive about things.

 

My husband has no natural children. His late wife already had a family when he married her. They are obviously grown up now. I think we should be ok from that point of view?

 

Sorry about Mrs Thyagarajan! She was the subject of an MRT decision the link to which you sent to a member Syed on 21/01/2012 in connection with his own father's health problems. I need to remember that not everyone's head contains nothing but health issues!

 

I'm grateful to you for pointing me in the right direction. Its so easy to get muddle headed with all this. Tomorrow when the house is quiet I will go through the links you have kindly supplied but for today the sun is out so I'm off to the beach with the dog - hopefully she will emigrate with us but thankfully her health is good!?

 

Any further 'droning' you might do would be more than welcome.

 

Thanks again

 

Linda

[Gollywobbler]

Hi Linda

 

Thanks for your prompt reply. Enjoy your walk with your dog.

 

Most pets manage very well when they go to Australia. Personally I'm a huge fan of Dr Bob Ghandour, one of the vets who runs PetAir UK:

 

http://www.petairuk.com/

 

Dr Bob is always willing to answer questions at no cost to the pet owner and what he says always makes sense.

 

Thanks for confirming that you and NH will be OK on the Balance of Family Test. His ex-wife's children won't count as "his" children because the overarching contract of marriage between him and their mother has ended.

 

With regard to NH's health, ideally you need to get hold of the relevant "Note for Guidance of the Medical Officer of the Commonwealth." That used to be relatively easy to do because each of the Guidance Notes was contained in a separate PDF file, so one could just insist on production of the whole document. It is impossible for a lay person to understand the Guidance Notes but the relevant Guidance Note(s) could just be sent to the visa applicant's own doctors, who would understand every word.

 

There is now a new set of Guidance Notes, issued from about 2009/2010 onwards. DIAC insist that the new Notes have been/will be "published." That is, they are being hidden on Legend. Most people are too stingy to buy a subscription to Legend:

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/business-services/legend/

 

A friend of mine is a qualified Australian legal practitioner, admitted in Victoria, and she is also a Registered Migration Agent. Periodically I get Sandra Maxfield to do me a favour by checking how many of the new Guidance Notes have actually made it onto Legend. There are supposed to be 19 altogether. One is "General Guidance" but the other 18 deal with specific medical problems; eg there is one on nephrology, another one on oncology, another one on cardiology etc.

 

At one of his two appearances before the JSCM early in 2010, Dr Douglas insisted that all 19 of the new Guidance Notes had been written, he had approved them and he said he was certain that all of them would be published on Legend by no later than July 2010. Three of them had been published so far, he said, and the rest would follow shortly.

 

That had not happened by mid-2011, the last time I asked Sandra to check. The only ones that were actually on Legend were the ones that Dr Douglas had described to the JSCM. So where are the rest? What is the reason for their late/non appearance? The rumour is that the RACP might have refused to endorse them. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians despise DIAC. That is common knowledge. The first of the new Guidance Notes, prepared in 2008/9, was the one about Nephrology. The RACP said that the "new" Note was nothing except a re-hash of the old Note, which by then was 20 years old and hopelessly out of date medically. The RACP chucked the draft of the new Nephrology Note back at DIAC with a red line through it and told them to do it again if they wanted this new Note to be approved by the RACP.

 

The Aussie Govt, in its wisdom, had allowed DIAC to outsource the production of the new Guidance Notes to a private sector company called Adhealth Pty Ltd, which is based in Victoria. There are two contracts with Adhealth and the Aussie taxpayer had contracted to pay Adhealth about $3 million AUD for the production of the 19 new Guidance Notes. The taxpayer is entitled to demand value for money in return, so personally I'm with the group of observers who sympathise with the RACP. If the new Notes are not good enough then Adhealth will just have to do them again and one hopes there won't be any cost overruns..... The contracts themselves are matters of public record - anyone can read those on-line, download them etc. I've looked at them but not in forensic detail - I was merely shocked by what seemed to me to be exorbitant cost. (But it could have been worse, hey? DIAC could have asked G4S to produce the new Notes instead, thus guaranteeing that they would never appear.)

 

The Law Institute of Victoria are influential and they are livid about DIAC's plan to hide the new Guidance Notes on Legend. They are top-notch lawyers and they have a special sub-Committee that deals with the Health requirement for migration. They are also super-ethical lawyers. A lawyer cannot offer a visa applicant competent medical advice. Only a doctor can do that bit, so in order to produce properly ethical, competent medico-legal advice it is necessary to have the visa applicant's doctor and his lawyer working together. Half-measures won't do if the aim is to do the job properly. Some visa applicants are rolling in money and they are prepared to pay their advisers to do the job properly.

 

In some ways, I think there is merit in the idea of publishing the new Notes on-line only because doing that makes it easy to amend them, update them etc. Paper was a disaster for that aspect, so there is merit in the new idea. It is merely not good enough merit unless Legend is opened up to public access at no cost to members of the public, in my view. (That said, Sandra told me that Legend is extremely user-unfriendly. Proper legal publishers understand the need for user-friendliness but Legend seems to belong to the Australian Government - which is not a legal publisher......!)

 

I moaned at DIAC's Regional Director for Europe, based at Australia House in London. How is Joe Bloggs, who does not live in Australia, supposed to access these supposedly "public" documents when it is not possible to get a free subscription to Legend? (I know that for sure because I've asked the people who run Legend.) The Regional Director had obviously not tried to access any of the new Notes himself before he replied to me. He promised that anyone based in Europe can ask Australia House in London to produce copies of any of the new Guidance Notes, free of charge. (Oz House are very efficient - on that score, they put the British Government to shame.)

 

BUT - there spake a man who has never actually tried to do it. Sandra confirmed that the new Notes have been saved in a special computer format which makes it impossible for anyone to copy them adequately. They are full of hyperlinks to other documents, websites, law reports etc. A copy & paste into a Word document would produce a "two dimensional" result because the hyperlinks won't work without a subscription to Legend. Also, even a two dimensional Word document would be 50 or 60 pages in length and the visa applicant's doctors would have to have the whole thing, not just whichever bits of it seem relevant to an Administrator in Oz House who is not a medical specialist.

 

I grumbled again. This was a kind offer but it was not good enough. The new Notes are designed to be dealt with on-line, not on paper, so the offer wouldn't really solve the problem ideally well. What were DIAC going to do about that? DIAC harrumph about the idea that they are "non-discriminatory" but without free, public access to Legend from anywhere else in the world they are actually discriminating between visa applicants who live in Australia and those who do not. I agree with the LIV. Either open Legend up properly and make it free or ditch Legend, enlarge the DIAC website and deal with the problem that way instead.

 

Eventually it was agreed that if the problem crops up in practice then it will be possible to put the visa applicant's own doctors in direct touch with Dr Douglas, via Oz House in London. I think that is probably an acceptable compromise because Dr Douglas is a very Good Bloke. He is very fair-minded, he is 100% honest, he is always willing to go the extra mile to help and he definitely understands his subject brilliantly well. Another doctor would have nothing to fear from Dr Douglas.

 

The LIV insist that all 19 of the new Guidance Notes should be published on the DIAC website, not hidden on Legend. I entirely agree. It should not be necessary for two doctors to play cat 'n' mouse with each other in order to be able to advise a visa applicant properly. The LIV persuaded the JSCM, so it is now one of the formal Recommendations in the Enabling Australia report, but nobody knows when the Govt might Respond to that report, or what their Response might be.

 

DIAC whinge that it would be prohibitively expensive to increase the size of the DIAC website to enable it to carry all the medical stuff fully. The LIV said, "Sod the cost, chum. Just DO it!" The JSCM said the same, so we shall see.....

 

.......

Edited August 5, 2012 by Gollywobbler
typos

[Gollywobbler]

Hi again, Linda

 

Thanks for reminding me how to find Mrs Thyagarajan.

 

For anyone feeling a bit morose today, here is a further copy of the link to the lady's MRT case:

 

http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/cth/MRTA/2008/897.html?stem=0&synonyms=0&query=parent%20visa%20%20%204005%20%20%20diabetes

 

At the time when Mrs Thyagarajan's appeal was heard by the MRT, the threshold for "significant cost" was deemed to be $21,000 AUD during the visa applicant's first five years in Australia if the visa applicant is 75 years of age or younger. If the visa applicant is 75 or older then the administrative, policy idea of "significant cost" was $21,000 or more during the applicant's first three years in Australia.

 

The administrative, policy threshold of $21,000 was introduced in 1998 or 1999. It was probably first mooted five years earlier but Government Wheels grind so slowly that they make an ancient snail with terminal arthritis seem sprightly.

 

Twice a year, DIAC are ritually grilled by the Senate Estimates Committee:

 

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Senate_Estimates

 

In May 2009, DIAC told Senate Estimates that DIAC believed the "significant costs" threshold should be increased to $100,000 per visa applicant, up from $21,000.

 

In August 2011, DIAC confirmed that $21,000 was still the threshold figure. By December 2011, however, DIAC had presumably felt kicked, so they confirmed that the new threshold figure is now $35,000 during the visa applicant's first three or five years in Australia.

 

This new threshold figure of $35,000 sounds like an interim threshold figure to me. If DIAC thought that $100,000 was the correct figure three years ago, there is no way that the health of the world's population has improved so dramatically that $35,000 is reasonable instead.

 

However, it IS better than nothing and it will do for the time being, I suppose......

 

Cheers

 

Gill

Edited August 5, 2012 by Gollywobbler
typos

[Guest mildygirl]

Hi Gill and JohnB

 

I'm just touching base with you, not sure if you remember me. To refresh your memory briefly - my (now) 89 year old MiL applied for her onshore aged parent visa in September 2010, has her BVA but still not a peep from anyone. Reckon we must be on borrowed time there, and just hoping they don't want medicals. Because of her age, to be honest we aren't really too worried about the time she will spend in the queue, because realistically - well, I won't say it, but you know what I mean. Of greater concern to us is whether they really have decided not to bother with first medicals. She might even pass it without a problem, as she's a tough old bird but even more so now they have raised the threshhold to $35,000 as there's not a thing wrong with her. We took a chance and didn't bother with private health insurance and that has proved so far to be a good decision. If either of you has any news about that, I'd be very pleased to know! Good wishes to you both!

[johnbshepherd]

Hi Mildygirl

 

The only significant news I have had recently is from a thread on a sister site (PomsIn Oz) at

 

http://www.pomsinoz.com/forum/migration-issues/131621-aged-parent-residence-visa-subclass-804-a-2.html

 

According to a post from Aerotony, in June this year DIAC had just got around to dealing with 804 applicants from April 2009 which suggests that the "queue to get into the queue" is now over three years long. I still don't know whether the first medical is still required but it looks as if your MiL has another year at least before the question arises.

 

Best Regards

 

John

[Gollywobbler]

Hi Mildygirl

 

I think the short cut to discovering whether or not a first medical will be required, and if so when it is likely to be required, will be to ask the Manager of the Parents Visa Centre. I will send you a PM describing how to do that.

 

Some British friends of mine applied for APV 804s in December 2009. Their application was acknowledged and their Bridging Visas confirmed very quickly but they have not heard anything more since then. To judge from the information kindly provided by JohnB and Aerotony, I suspect that my own friends won't hear anything more until sometime in 2013.

 

Legally, it doesn't really matter. The Aussie Govt is not in the habit of trying to throw ancient visa applicants out of the country. There are various ways to appeal against a negative outcome if the first medical result says "Does Not Meet" [the Health requirement for migration.] The appeals process can drag on for about 6 to 8 years. By the end of all that, the Aged Parent visa applicant has either died or s/he has become too unwell to be able to leave Australia. No airline will accept the risk of embarking a passenger whose own doctors say is not well enough to travel aboard an ordinary passenger flight.

 

If you discover whether or not a first medical is still required, how long it is likely to be before it is requested etc, please could I ask you to be very kind and let the rest of us know via this thread, please?

 

Many thanks

 

Gill

[Guest Tingo]

Hi Gollywobbler

 

I have read some of your posts about parent visas and found them really helpful. I migrated to Oz in 2006 and have now settled down. My Mum has visited Australia a few times and she would like to migrate here as well. We are thinking applying for Contributory Parent Visa for her, however, we don't have enough money to apply for CPV for my step father. We are thinking he can apply for a partner's visa 5 years after my mum has obtained permanant visa. If we put on the application form the reason for one parent applyfing for CPV is my stepfather is currently working and he will not retire for at least another 8 years (he's 58 at the moment). will this reason persuasive in your opinion? (I heard the migration would not easily approve for one parent application for CPV)

 

Thanks a lot

 

Tingo

[Guest sumon]

Hi Sumon

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/migrants/family/parent-visa-processing-priorities.htm

 

Please read what DIAC say in the link above.

 

I have just checked the Queue Calculator for you. According to that, there are approximately 2,890 applicants ahead of your Parents. At the moment, DIAC say they are granting about 1,500 Parent sc 103 visas each year. I suspect that this means that your own Parents' visas will probably be granted sometime between 01 July 2014 and 30 June 2015.

 

Vheers

 

Gill

 

Hi Gill,

 

Thanks a Lot. Good new is that I have got letter from PVC that hey need to do medical and assurence of support and they are on 21/13 Fin year which is not really accouring to Queue calculator say.. So it looks like Queue calculator is 1 year behind..

[johnbshepherd]

Parents waiting for parent visas may be interested in a new visa which came in to force today (Nov 24 2012).

 

[h=1]What's New for Tourist and Visitor Visas[/h][h=2]Longer Tourist visas for parents of Australians[/h]From 24 November 2012, parents of Australian citizens and permanent residents will be able to apply for Tourist visas to visit Australia for longer.

The department will grant on a case-by-case basis:

 

• Tourist visas of up to five years validity which provide a stay of up to 12 months on each entry to those parents who are outside Australia and are in the Parent (subclass 103) visa queue.
  
• Tourist visas of up to three years validity with 12 months stay on each entry will be considered for parents who are outside Australia and are not in the Parent visa queue.
  

These changes allow parents who meet the criteria for a Tourist visa to have regular extended visits with their family in Australia without needing to apply for a new visa on each visit.

Under these more flexible arrangements, in addition to meeting all other Tourist visa requirements, parents will be expected to hold health insurance to cover any healthcare costs during their stay and will have a visa condition limiting applications for further visas while they are in Australia.

Like all tourists, parents granted Tourist visas are expected to maintain extended periods of absence between visits to Australia.

See: About This Visa

 

Full details are here.

 

It mentions health care but in the small print it says that people from RHCA countries (e.g. UK) are covered by that.

 

Cheers

 

John

[Guest auck]

Probably my question is not new here and there is some answer somewhere but anyway it would be appreciated if somebody can answer based on his own experience.

 

The situation is my parents have been living in Australia as temporary residents since 2007.

In 2010 we decided to apply for 804 sub-class visa. The application was lodged in Sept 2010, we received a letter of acknowledgment with the information that everything is fine, you will be contacted in due cause. Last week we received a letter from Immigration dept stating that we need to provide additional docs which is the result of medical examination, police certificates etc.

As far as I understand we are far away from the front of the queue for 804 visa.

 

Does it mean that we will undergo another med examination and police check when the time comes to process visas? So applicants usually undergo 2 medicals in total?

 

Have we actually been placed in a queue or not yet? I always thought that the Letter of Acknowledgement was a confirmation that the application has been place in a queue waiting for processing.

 

If it happens that we are not yet in a queue and our place will be allocated after medical examination and police check, then what Queue date we will get? Will it be the current date (say 01.01.2013) or the date when we actually lodged our application (10.09.2010)?

 

Your help with this enquiry will be very much appreciated.

[johnbshepherd]

Hi Auck

 

I went through the same process in 2006-7 so I can answer some of your questions based on my own experience

 

1) Does it mean that we will undergo another med examination and police check when the time comes to process visas? So applicants usually undergo 2 medicals in total?

 

Answer: Yes. There will be another medical and you will need new police clearance when your parents reach the head of the queue. Your information is in fact very useful because we were uncertain whether the first medical was still required. Your parents' experience seems to confirm that it is still a requirement

 

2) Have we actually been placed in a queue or not yet? I always thought that the Letter of Acknowledgement was a confirmation that the application has been place in a queue waiting for processing.

 

Answer: No. You are not actually in the queue until you receive a letter headed "Notice of allocation of queue date" or something similar. Until then you are in a queue to get into the real queue. The queue date will be the date on which you satisfy immigration that you fulfill all of the conditions for the award of the visa. Mainly these are the balance of family test, assurance of support, police clearance certificates and passing the medicals. Usually passing the medicals is the final condition to be fulfilled so the queue date will be the date on which DIAC receives satisfactory medical reports.

 

3) If it happens that we are not yet in a queue and our place will be allocated after medical examination and police check, then what Queue date we will get? Will it be the current date (say 01.01.2013) or the date when we actually lodged our application (10.09.2010)?

 

Answer: See the answer to 2). If you get satisfactory medical reports on (say) Jan 15, 2013, that will be your queue date.

 

In my case my wife and I passed the medicals in May 2007 but we were not actually told what our queue date was until March 2009. After a bit of trouble I managed to confirm that our queue date is in fact May 31 2007. Based on this experience you may have to wait a while before you find out officially what your queue date is but you can probably assume that it is within a month or so of taking the medicals.

 

With our queue date of May 31 2007 it now looks as if we will reach the head of the queue in mid-2014 - about seven years from the queue date or nearly eight from the first application. I think that waiting times have become slightly less since we applied. In the meantime you can get some of the benefits of having the visa right from the date of the letter of acknowledgement. If you are from the UK you are covered by the Reciprocal Health Care Agreement so you can get Medicare cards which can save you an awful lot of money.

 

Cheers

 

John

[Guest miraclebabycaw]

For those of you here on bridging visa's can you please let me know about health insurances? We are new to the country, my mom (a Brit but not resident in the UK for a number of years) has come with us on a temporary visa. We plan on applying for an 804 I think it is in the forthcoming months (non contrib, in country visa), and will be using an immigration lawyer to assist as we will not have been resident for a significant amount of time. At this stage she is just covered by her travel insurance but we need to get some other form of medical cover. She does still have a NHS card from the UK but being a non resident I am not sure if she will be able to get cover so was wondering what cover you guys might have? We have only been in country a week now so very new at finding out way. Thanks for any info.

 

Regards

Shona

[Alan Collett]

For those of you here on bridging visa's can you please let me know about health insurances? We are new to the country, my mom (a Brit but not resident in the UK for a number of years) has come with us on a temporary visa. We plan on applying for an 804 I think it is in the forthcoming months (non contrib, in country visa), and will be using an immigration lawyer to assist as we will not have been resident for a significant amount of time. At this stage she is just covered by her travel insurance but we need to get some other form of medical cover. She does still have a NHS card from the UK but being a non resident I am not sure if she will be able to get cover so was wondering what cover you guys might have? We have only been in country a week now so very new at finding out way. Thanks for any info.

 

Regards

Shona

 

Hi Shona.

 

Have a look at the Visitors Cover provided by the likes of Medibank Private and Australian Unity.

 

I have a contact at Aus Unity if you'd like to discuss - send me an email (click on my name to the left of this post) if so.

 

Remember the need to be "settled" (as defined) when sponsoring a parent visa.

 

Best regards.

[Guest sharonlives]

Hi everyone. I'm not a Pom or in Adelaide, so I hope you don't mind me posting here! It's been a great source of ideas and information.

 

I'm looking into the Aged Parent Visa Onshore (804) for my MiL who is currently in South Africa. As Gill has previously said, if she comes to visit us in Australia as a visitor, she might then decide to apply for a visa. I know the 804 is for people applying from within Australia. The way I read it, she needs to be in Australia when she applies, and then she needs to be in Australia when it is granted. Can anyone advise if it is fine for her to apply while in Oz, then leave (back to South Africa) and then just make sure she comes back when it is about to be granted? I presume she can just get tourist visa (eVisitor) if she wants to visit us in the interim? She doesn't want to move to Australia just yet (hence doing bridging visa A and B is not the preferred route). I figure that the 6 year (approx) wait for the APV is a good length of time, and saves us the $45k approx it would cost to do the contributory route. Any advice or comments most welcome!

[Guest mildygirl]

Hi Auck (and hi John)

 

Auck, you are in pretty much the same situation as we are with my nearly 90 year old MiL. She applied for her 804 in September (or was it August? No matter) 2010 too. She has also just received the letter requiring medicals, police checks etc - the medical results have all been sent off, plus the Australian police check but we are waiting for the UK one to come back to us.

 

What has come as rather a bombshell to us, however, is the discovery on this forum that we are apparently going to have to give evidence of the Assurance of Support now, whereas we had originally understood that it wasn't due until just before visa grant. We didn't realise that anything at all had to be done regarding it, at this stage. That's alarmed us, as both of us are retired, and living on savings which certainly don't bring in the income Centrelink demands to provide the AoS requirements. We were completely convinced that the AoS wouldn't be required for many years - I am not doubting the migration agent in any way, but at the same time we can't have asked the right questions, because evidently we had totally misunderstood.

 

So now we are panic stricken! Am I reading this right, now? We can give the names of our two children who were going to do the AoS jointly, but with one waiting for the grant of a spouse visa, and another waiting for the grant of an onshore skilled visa with no hope of getting to the top of the queue for another year at least, our two Assurers of Support that we hadn't expected to need for years, are not going to be permanent residents in this time frame! We - and she - have funds in the bank, but not a sufficient income. We are really worried now! Please can you let me know what they have actually asked re the AoS? I've just edited this posting, as I wanted to explain that she lives with us, she wouldn't be capable of living by herself, and we look after her every need, though I know Centrelink aren't swayed by that argument, unfortunately.

Edited January 3, 2013 by mildygirl

[Guest mildygirl]

 

If you discover whether or not a first medical is still required, how long it is likely to be before it is requested etc, please could I ask you to be very kind and let the rest of us know via this thread, please?

 

Many thanks

 

Gill

Hello Gill

 

As you may have seen on here, our experience has been the same as Auck's. Mother in Law is 90 in a few weeks, and applied in September (August maybe?) 2010 for her 804 visa and has been on a BVA since then. Got a call from her GP's surgery alerting her that her Medicare card had expired... trip to Medicare with the letter DIAC sent way back when saying 'you are entitled to Medicare, keep this letter as evidence', Medicare wouldn't accept it and insisted she obtain a new letter. We contacted DIAC, and within less than a week she'd had a letter requiring her to attend her medical! I decided that it was the Medicare card issue that had rocked the boat, but now I see that Auck was in a similar situation so perhaps it really was just a coincidence. She's had the medical, including the chest X Ray, urine test etc - the X Ray found 'mild effusive cardio megaly' but the Doctor who did the medical said it was nothing to worry about and had probably been caused some time ago by high blood pressure which has been controlled by medication for about five years now. Everything else was absolutely fine. The police check hasn't come back yet from the UK, but obviously that will be clear, she's never even had an overdue library book! But what's thrown us into a complete panic in the last 24 hours is the revelation that we apparently have to provide evidence of the AoS now, when we believed nothing would have to be done until just before visa grant! I've made a separate posting about that. We've been through all the information we can find on the website, and can't find anything that makes it clear we have to give evidence now!

[Alan Collett]

Hi Auck (and hi John)

 

<snip>

What has come as rather a bombshell to us, however, is the discovery on this forum that we are apparently going to have to give evidence of the Assurance of Support now, whereas we had originally understood that it wasn't due until just before visa grant. We didn't realise that anything at all had to be done regarding it, at this stage. That's alarmed us, as both of us are retired, and living on savings which certainly don't bring in the income Centrelink demands to provide the AoS requirements. We were completely convinced that the AoS wouldn't be required for many years - I am not doubting the migration agent in any way, but at the same time we can't have asked the right questions, because evidently we had totally misunderstood.

 

So now we are panic stricken! Am I reading this right, now? We can give the names of our two children who were going to do the AoS jointly, but with one waiting for the grant of a spouse visa, and another waiting for the grant of an onshore skilled visa with no hope of getting to the top of the queue for another year at least, our two Assurers of Support that we hadn't expected to need for years, are not going to be permanent residents in this time frame! We - and she - have funds in the bank, but not a sufficient income. We are really worried now! Please can you let me know what they have actually asked re the AoS? I've just edited this posting, as I wanted to explain that she lives with us, she wouldn't be capable of living by herself, and we look after her every need, though I know Centrelink aren't swayed by that argument, unfortunately.

 

Suggest you might check the letter from the case officer, as a letter we received just before Xmas for a subclass 804 visa client requested information relating to the sponsor, and not the assurer (as well as the medical examination, police certificates, etc).

 

Best regards.

[johnbshepherd]

Hi Mildygirl

 

As I explained on the other thread, I have been in the "real' queue for the 804 since 2007 and nobody has had to pay anything in the way of any assurance of support. I think that you have to name the person who will sponsor the applicant but they certainly do not have to pay anything at this stage, not even by buying a bond..

 

Regards

 

John

Edited January 3, 2013 by johnbshepherd

[Guest mildygirl]

Suggest you might check the letter from the case officer, as a letter we received just before Xmas for a subclass 804 visa client requested information relating to the sponsor, and not the assurer (as well as the medical examination, police certificates, etc).

 

Best regards.

 

Thank you Alan!! Certainly the letter we had didn't mention anything about the AoS, hence my shock! It was a previous poster on here who mentioned that it was required in order to be placed in the queue, but seems it was just a slip up. Thank goodness, we can breathe again!

 

Kindest regards and Happy New Year!

[Guest mildygirl]

Hi John

 

Thank you again for your time. It was actually something you said in the reply to Auck regarding the AoS being required in order to get into the queue which threw me into a panic! I'm guessing you were intending to say 'sponsor' but that's ok, it's all cleared up now! Thank you, and a Happy New Year!