As processing times for some parent immigration visas balloon out to almost 30 years, the families hoping to be reunited for good are left in limbo
“My heart is broken,” writes Maria from Norway.
Originally from Poland, Maria and her husband, Robert, are eager to join their son in Perth. He’s an IT engineer at a global company who relocated to Australia several years ago. Since then, he’s married, become a citizen and had a son.
In August 2021, Maria and Robert applied for contributory parent visas, which offer permanent residency and cost $47,955 for each person. At the time they were advised it would be three or four years before they could migrate. Now Maria is reading on Facebook that the wait could be more than six years.
“This is unbelievable!” fumes Maria. “This visa is so expensive. We must pay about AU$100,000 for two persons. And we must wait so long? How is it possible?
“I don’t understand why the Australian government is so afraid of parents who want to be with their families in Australia. They are not old and ill. Many of them are quite young, healthy and want to help their families in Australia and want to work.”
“Misook”, from South Korea, has already spent six years in the parent visa queue, though she and her husband “Soejun” and daughter “Eun” have been living in Australia for more than a decade (they do not wish to use their real names). In 2012, Misook’s employer sponsored her to come on a temporary skills visa to fill a gap in the global firm’s Australian operations. Eun, then 18, went to university and has since qualified as a lawyer, built a career and become a citizen.
Because she came to Australia late in her career, Misook was considered too old to apply for permanent residence as a skilled migrant.
The couple lodged their contributory parent visa applications in 2017. Based on information on the Home Affairs website at the time, they expected them to be issued by the end of 2019. But Misook now fears her application won’t be considered until 2025 or 2026.
‘My family has been living in limbo’
They are stuck in the condition that home affairs minister Clare O’Neil calls “permanent temporariness”. The uncertainty is causing physical, mental and financial hardship among many of those waiting for a visa decision.
“The thing is my family has been living in limbo where we can’t plan my family’s future due to the visa delay,” says Misook. “Sometimes I really feel depressed.”
At 75, a 12-year queue is basically pointless
Misook and Soejun have the skills to find well-paid jobs in Australia but are barred from working while they wait for Home Affairs to grind through its backlog of more than 86,000 contributory parent visa applications.
The Home Affairs website now advises that any new application for a contributory parent visa “may take at least 12 years to process”. In March, the expert review of Australia’s migration system commissioned by the government concluded it was more likely to be 15 years.
“The whole point of spending $100,000 is to get the visa granted sooner,” says Sarah from Perth. Her parents are both in their 70s, and she encouraged them to apply for contributory visas in 2019 on the understanding that the process would only take a few years. “At 75, a 12-year queue is basically pointless,” she says.
Once Sarah and her parents realised the wait was much longer than anticipated, they switched to a non-contributory parent category that allows her parents to wait onshore until their cases are decided.
Sarah is fighting to get her parents into Australia: ‘The whole point of spending $100,000 is to get the visa granted sooner.’
This visa category is much more affordable and there are “only” 51,000 visa applications in the processing pipeline, but far fewer visas are issued each year, so the delays are even longer. The Home Affairs website advises that a new application for a non-contributory visa “may take at least 29 years to process”. The expert review led by the former secretary of prime minister and cabinet again thought this optimistic. It estimates the wait at more than 40 years.
While Sarah’s parents can stay in Australia on a bridging visa until they get a decision, they are far from settled. They are also about $12,000 out of pocket, since the $5,500 in upfront fees they paid to lodge their first application was not refunded and they had to stump up more fees to lodge the second one.
A new application for a non-contributory visa ‘may take at least 29 years to process’
“The uncertainty is very stressful for them at their age,” says Sarah. “They feel like they’re in a no man’s land. You are resident in Australia, but you are temporary, never fully resident.
“How can we properly integrate into Australian society when it takes 40 years to get a decision on whether we can stay? They will never be granted the visa in their lifetime and will spend what time they have left wondering if they will be asked to leave.”
If her parents return to Britain, then Sarah has decided she will also go back to Britain to care for them. “I feel a deep sense of responsibility,” she says. But Sarah’s profound filial obligation might force her to choose between her parents and her husband, Matthew �` the man she moved to Australia to marry in 2010. He was willing to give Britain a go and secured a job in his field but wasn’t happy there. “After trying it out for a year,” she says, “he’s clear that he doesn’t want to live in the UK.”
Clearing the backlog
Cases like those of Maria, Misook and Sarah are but a tiny sample of the parent migration experience. There are more than 137,000 applicants stuck in the processing pipeline for a permanent visa, a backlog that has tripled in size in the past decade (see chart).
Source: Data to 2021-22 is from Home Affairs and its predecessor departments via annual reports on the migration program and the serial publication Population Flows: Immigration Aspects. Data for 2022-23 is to 30 May 2023.
Many applicants feel they have been misled by Australian authorities because the processing timelines for the “contributory visa” posted on the Home Affairs website have proven to be serious underestimates.
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On websites and chat groups families share their anguish, frustration, confusion and anger at a failed and failing system. They are organising too.
Misook directs me to the elegant and professional website of the #clearthebacklog campaign, which is urging the government to allow 20,000 parents to settle in Australia every year. The Facebook group “Permanent visa for parents” has almost 6,000 members. Sarah has signed up more than 200 people who, like her, made down-payments of thousands of dollars for a fast-track visa only to discover the wait times were three or four times longer than the Home Affairs website indicated. They feel they handed over their money on false pretences and ought to be refunded.
“People are making major life decisions on sketchy, ambiguous and sometimes downright inaccurate information, provided by both the government and immigration agents,” says Sarah. “I still don’t know if we have the right visa, and we’re currently $12,000 down, just to be in the queue to get in the queue.”
“We’re not rich,” says Sarah. “We’re working hard and saving every penny so that we can help my parents make the move. We’re just asking for a fair, transparent pathway that is fit for purpose. But I suspect in the end it will just get too hard to stay.”
The parent conundrum
Australians like Sarah have good reasons for wanting to bring their parents to join them here. As Sarah’s story shows, love and duty fuel a powerful desire to keep fathers and mothers close by as they age.
Grandparents pass on important family knowledge. Arvind in Adelaide says his children learn about language, culture and religion when they observe Hindu holy days with their grandmother.
There are pragmatic considerations too. Grandparents often look after children, cook, clean and maintain houses and gardens or help out in family businesses, enabling their adult children to work and build careers.
If her parents return to Britain, then Sarah has decided she will also go back to care for them. ‘I feel a deep sense of responsibility,’ she says. Photograph: Tony McDonough/The Guardian
Australia’s migration program has a strong bias towards youth, skills and English language proficiency, because evidence shows that migrants with these attributes make the biggest economic and fiscal contribution to the nation over the course of their lives. A skew towards youth also helps to slow the overall ageing of society (at least in the short term), increasing the number of wage earners and taxpayers who can support those too old or too young to work. Even if they are only in their 50s or 60s, and have valuable skills and speak good English, parent migrants are already at the end of their working lives.
This is the parent conundrum. On the one hand is the legitimate, heartfelt desire of first-generation migrant families to bring parents and grandparents to live with them in Australia.
On the other are economic considerations regarding the long-term national interest that lead swiftly to a conclusion that parents are not the kind of migrants Australia wants or needs.
There are two drivers behind the refusal to increase the parent intake in line with demand.
The first is a serious concern about the fiscal and demographic implications of adding 20,000-30,000 older migrants to the Australian population each year. The second is an electoral consideration. Amid an intractable housing affordability crisis and unprecedented pressure on Australia’s health- and aged-care systems, the term “big Australia” remains an emotive slogan. Any government increasing the parent intake would open itself up to a powerful negative campaign at the next election.
Successive governments have responded to the parent conundrum by rationing permanent migration places, but as the expert panel reporting to government in March concluded: “Providing an opportunity for people to apply for a visa that will probably never come seems both cruel and unnecessary.”
In its response to the panel’s report, the Albanese government prioritised skilled migration reform, but it has also promised to turn its attention to the family stream. Reforming the dysfunctional parent visa system presents by far the biggest challenge.
Last week the immigration minister, Andrew Giles, said the previous government cut the number of places, wait times exploded and 85,000 more parents were left in the queue. “It’s just one of the signs that the system hasn’t been working in the best interests of all Australians,” he said.
“We’re considering the migration review and will have more to say on this in the future.”