UPDATE: This visa was supposed to be legislated in November 2017 but it hasn’t been introduced until now.
The government announced in November 2018 that the Temporary Sponsored Parent Visa will be introduced in the first half of 2019. Once we have more solid updates we will post them here.
A new Temporary Sponsored Parent Visa will be introduced at the end of 2017 to allow parents of Australian permanent residents and citizens to stay with their children for longer periods.
The new visa is subject to legislation approval, and that is expected to happen in the second semester of 2017.
Even though a lot of people thought this visa is unusual as it has a high cost, it is a good visa option if you compare with the other options parents of Australian permanent residents and citizens have at the moment:
- Tourist/Visitor Visas which require regular departures and are very disruptive. In a lot of cases, there is a requirement for showing evidence of high levels of financial support, which some families cannot demonstrate.
- Parent Permanent Visa, which has a processing time of around 30 years (yes, you read it correctly, 30 years).
- Contributory Parent Visa, which is approved much faster than the one above but requires a significant contribution to social services and payment of a bond, which means spending around A$50,000.00 per person included in the application.
On top of all the requirements above, the Parent and Contributory Parent Visas require the applicant to pass a Balance of the Family Test. This means that a lot of parents, who have more children living outside of Australia than in the country, cannot apply for these visas, even if they can wait or pay for the contribution.
The newly announced Temporary Sponsored Parent Visa, on the other hand, will:
- Allow children to sponsor their parents for five years consecutively;
- Offer an option to extend that stay for another five years, meaning they can live here with their children for ten years;
- Not require parents to pass the Balance of the Family Test;
- This visa will not require applicants to demonstrate any level of English;
- The visa will allow for some informal, short-term study, but it will not permit that holder work unless it is helping family childcare.
The goal of this visa is to enable families to live together without imposing what the government calls “additional burden on Australia’s health care system”.
There are some strict requirements though, and this may mean some people won’t be able to apply, even if they can afford the application fee:
- Only one set of parents per home will be able to be sponsored at the same time. So if you want to sponsor your parents, but your husband wants to bring his parents over too, this won’t be possible at the same time.
- Parents applying for the visa will have to show evidence that they are in good health, don’t have serious criminal records, and don’t have any public health debt in Australia (such as having had to use hospital services in past visits and not having paid the bill).
- The son/daughter sponsoring the parents must have lived in Australia for at least four years, meet minimum income requirements and also not have serious criminal records.
What about the costs?
Visa Application fees will be A$10,000.00 for a five-year period and A$5,000.00 for three years.
If holders want to extend the visa for longer, they will have to pay the fees again.
Important: this visa was only created because it will carry a requirement that applicants hold private health insurance from an Australian provider during the whole time they live here. This is the basic condition under which the visa was created, so it doesn’t create a burden on public health services.
People living in Australia on Temporary Residence Visas of any sort, such as Sponsorship Visas, Student Visas, etc. will not be able to sponsor their parents for this visa. They should look for other options if wanting to bring their parents here.
Please keep checking our blog and Facebook page for updates when this visa is formally released.
Erica Carneiro
Co-Founder, Director and Registered Migration Agent 0532487
