One of the toughest decisions facing migrants arriving in Australia is what do we do about our parents?
Some countries do not allow migrants to bring their parents. Australia thankfully has parent visa options available for them. It is, however, important to understand the best parent visas option that is best for your circumstance.
Australian parent visas are designed in various types to meet various situations. They can be permanent, or provisional, contributory, or non-contributory. While some provisional visa leads to permanent visa application in the future, some may not.
- The Contributory Parent Visa (Subclass 173) is a temporary parent visa. This visa allows you to stay in Australia for 24 months, and cannot be extended or renewed.
- To live as a permanent resident of Australia, you can apply for Contributory Parent Visa (Subclass 143). Currently this takes up to 5-6 years to process this visa. The second visa application fees are quite expensive and is around $43,600 per parent . This amount is requested once the parents pass the health and police check-ups. It is important to understand the timing of the payment in order to save for this cost.
- If one of the parents is 65.5 years, or above, and stays in Australia on a visa that allows him/her to apply for a parent visa onshore (a visitor or tourist visa WITHOUT the 8503 “No Further Stay” condition), he/she can apply for the visa staying in Australia.
- Sub class 870 temporary visa, allows parents to stay in Australia for a longer time than the Visitor Visas. Subclass 870 Visa does not require the parents to meet the ‘Balance of Family Test’ which applies to the aforementioned visas. Parents holding this visa can stay in Australia for 3 to 5 years temporarily without the need to depart Australia. But, you must be outside of Australia for at least 3 months to apply for a consecutive Sponsored Parent Visa. So, you can stay in Australia for a maximum of 10 years on this visa.The fee associated with the visa to stay up to 3 years is $5,000 and $10,000 up to 5 years.