Wave the Sails

Due a number of extenuating factors my husband is facing a series of operations which will leave him rather incapacitated for a number of months and unable to work.

My parents meet all the Visa requirements after we have been here 2 years, but apparently the Visa Authorities can sometimes speed this up due to compassionate reasons.

They meet the annual income requirements, have private Healthcare (transferable) and a good amount of money with which to buy a house and invest in a business of some sort.

Does anyone have any knowledge experience of this.

Thanks in advance

Gill Palmer

Dear Mrs J

My Mum is in the process of applying for a Contributory Parent visa, so I know a little bit about them.

Have you read Booklet 3 from cover to cover? If not, it is essential to do so. Are you sure that your parents would be OK on the Balance of Family Test and also that they would sail through their medicals?

Assuming that both of those are OK, your parents would need you to sponsor their application, and to provide an Assurance of Support, coupled with lodging a Bond for $10,000. Up to 3 people can club together to provide the AoS, because the Sponsor/Assurer must be able to meet the means test. The means test is based on income for the purposes of calculating Family Benefit or something, and is roughly $33,000 of taxable income per annum.

If Hubby is unable to work for several months, I suspect it is unlikely that Centrelink would accept him as as a joint Assurer at this stage. If I am right, can you satisfy the means test on your own? If not, is there anyone else who could come in with you to provide the AoS?

I think your best bet will be to ring Centrelink, explain the situation to them, and seek their advice.

The test for the sponsor/assurer is that he or she must be "settled" in Australia. Proving this is normally done by producing tax-returns for the last two years, current payslips and so on. There are circumstances in which that can be relaxed to a certain extent, but much depends on the Case Officer's discretion, I believe. That discretion is unlikely to be exercised if you have only been in Australia for a short time yourself, I suspect.

If your parents would be applying from outside Australia, their application would be handled by the POPC in Perth. That being so, and since you are clearly not certain about your position, I think your best bet will be to consult a Registered Migration Agent. One in Perth would be handy if you could visit him easily. If not, then I would suggest George Lombard, who contribuutes to this forum.

Hope this helps a little, and hopefully somebody with real know-how about the complications you may face will also reply to you.

Good luck

Gill

George Lombard

Hi Mrs J,

You do have a couple of options for speeding up the arrival.

A very important first consideration is that even if you could sponsor them immediately you'd need, as a separate exercise, to arrange an assurance of support, which categorically requires the assurer to have two years of tax returns here above the required minimum level. If that's possible then you should talk to an agent about under what circumstances someone may be "settled" for sponsorship purposes before the two years have elapsed.

A second consideration is that if they've got reasonable finances then they may be interested in the investor (retirement) visa described here: http://www.immi.gov.au/allforms/reti...est_retire.htm as a bridge between now and the time that you're settled. Or if the time until you being able to give an assurance or be "settled" is shorter than that you might want to consider a long stay visitor visa for them, eg 6 months.

Hope your husband will be ok, it must be difficult so far from family.

Cheers,

George Lombard

www.austimmigration.com.au