A new study calls on the federal government to contemplate the introduction of a new temporary stay parent visa, featuring the benefits of multiple entries and a generous 10-year validity period. It also argues that if the government is reluctant to classify parents as ‘immediate family’, it should abolish permanent parent migration altogether.
Backlog and processing times for the parents’ visa
Over the past decade, the backlog of unprocessed visas has roughly tripled, it said.
The huge backlog in permanent parent visa applications is thus not an inevitability but the product of deliberate political and administrative choices by successive governments.Scanlon Foundation Research Institute’s newly published report ‘The Parent Conundrum’.
To meet the growing demand, this year the government increased the total number of seats allocated for parents
However, Mr Mares contends that the current quantity is too low, and maintains that an allocation of 20,000 slots will be required to adequately address the demand and clear the backlog.
Getting rid of permanent parent migration altogether may sound harsh, but at least it provides families with certainty so that they can plan their lives and accommodate themselves to reality, rather than banking on false hopes.Scanlon Foundation Research Institute’s newly published report ‘Parent Conundrum’.
He says that holding out the prospect of a visa that may never come due to endless backlogs was causing great distress to families.
According to Mr Mares, although the DHA website suggests a processing time of “at least” 29 years for aged parent visas and 12 years for contributory parent visas, the actual processing duration can extend beyond these estimates.
Other aspects examined in the report
The report suggests that if the definition of ‘immediate family’ for visa purposes were expanded to include parents of adults, it could result in an additional influx of 20,000 to 30,000 older migrants coming to Australia each year.
It notes the government’s decision to not increase parent intake is driven by two main factors.
Firstly, there are concerns about the fiscal and demographic impacts of adding thousands of older migrants annually to Australia and secondly, there’s a consideration of electoral consequences.
But migration advisers suspect many sponsors and applicants don’t interrogate data on processing times and lodge an application in the misplaced hope that a visa will be granted ahead of time.New report ‘The Parent Conundrum’
The report notes that Australia is the only country that uses a balance of family test which means parents requires that half of a parent’s children must be Australian citizens or permanent residents.
The report examines the parent migration procedures employed by other nations such as Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
It analyses the suggestion to shift to a Canadian or New Zealand style lottery to allocate parent visas in order to eliminate the current problem of massive visa application backlogs.
“A lottery might appear to be a neat political solution to the parent conundrum, but it fails on the key test of clarity and leaves families grasping at straws,” it points out.
Response to the report
“If possible, allowing easy travel for longer duration for parents would be the best option,” Ms Gupta tells SBS Hindi.
“I have not even considered filing for my parents’ permanent residency, as it has such long wait times associated with it,” Ms Gupta, whose parents are in their seventies, says.
Like the report, migration agent Seema Chauhan also questions the feasibility of a lottery system for parent visas.
She asserts that when applicants submit their visa applications, they typically are aware of the extended waiting period and are ready to accommodate it.
“The restriction on renewals for the Subclass 870 visa should be removed as it will promote family unity and long-term stability for families,” she says, adding that this long-term temporary visa was getting popular with her clients.
However, Abul Rizvi, former deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration, believes that there is an issue with extended temporary visas for parents.
“In the past we were never able to find a private health insurance provider who would provide a product that covered the full cost over the full period at a reasonable price. They just weren’t interested in insuring old people,” he comments.
“As you know, access to health and aged care services in Australia involves huge waiting times. A more generous parent policy would impact it negatively making it much harder to explain to the public who may have parents waiting to access these services,” he says.