Looking to reunite with your parents?

Potential good news for Australian citizens and permanent residents wanting to unite with their parents!

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton announced in late August that a long stay visa for sponsored parents is currently being conceptualised by the Department of Immigration and Boarder Protection.

Currently, it is possible for parents of Australian citizens and permanent residents to be issued with a visitor visa of up to five years if they have lodged a permanent visa application.

During its federal election campaign, the Liberal Coalition announced that upon re-election, it will remove the “existing permanent visa application” requisite and create a new and enhanced visitor visa subclass to allow long term multiple visits by sponsored parents.

The reason behind the election promise is that the Liberal Coalition “recognises that many Australians, including our growing South Asian, Chinese and Indian communities, face particular pressures through the separation of children from parents and grandchildren from grandparents”.

However, Mr. Dutton is unable to provide a time frame for implementation of the scheme. He said that it is important that the program is sustainable. This means the Department is currently working on how to put the right measures in place to ensure practicality and that the scheme does not place burden on Australia’s health care system.

“We need to have a program which is sustainable which is going to provide those opportunities on a temporary basis to provide support to families to bring somebody out. So we will work through to make sure that we get the program right,” he said.

Mr. Dutton said the government will make an announcement “as soon as we can”.

You can read more of what Mr. Dutton had to say here.