Child Visa - Offshore

This visa is for a child of a parent who must be an Australian citizen or a permanent resident. This is a permanent visa that allows a child to travel to and remain in Australia, with their parent.

The parent acts as a sponsor for the child and can lodge the visa application on behalf of the child.

This visa would allow the child to:

live permanently in Australia,

travel to and from Australia for five (5) years from the date the visa is granted.

Duration

This is a permanent visa.

A child can only be granted a permanent child visa on the basis of a step relationship in circumstances where the child's natural or adopted parent is:

Eligibility Criteria

Age

Children must be under 25, and if 18 years of age or older, must be a dependent i.e. a full-time student who is reliant upon their parents. The only exception to the age requirement is where the child has a disability that stops them from working.

Marital status

The child emigrating to Australia must not be married or living in a de facto (common law) relationship or be engaged to be married. If the applicant is 18 years of age or over, must never have had a spouse.

Custody of children under 18 years of age

If the children immigrating to Australia are under 18 years of age, permission for the child to migrate must be obtained from every person who has a right to decide where the child may live. This may be in the form of a statutory declaration or a court order.

Adopted Children

Applicants applying outside Australia who have been adopted after their parent became an Australian citizen, holder of a permanent visa, or eligible New Zealand citizen, cannot apply in this category and should consider applying in the adopted child category.

The applicant applying in Australia who was adopted after their parent became an Australian citizen, Australian permanent resident, or eligible New Zealand citizen, may still be able to apply in this category subject to meeting certain requirements.

Step-children

A step-child can only be included in the Child visa category if the step-child is under 18 years of age and the sponsoring step-parent is no longer the spouse of the child’s natural or adoptive parent but has a legal responsibility to care for the child.

Dependency

The immigrating child must be dependent on their sponsor. A child under 18 years of age is considered to be dependent. However for a child 18 years of age or older to be considered dependent, they must rely more on their sponsor than on any other person or source of financial support in either one of the circumstances below:

to meet their basic needs of food, shelter and clothing, and they must have relied on this support for a substantial period (usually 12 months) ,

because of a disability that prevents them working to support themselves. Disability denotes total or partial loss of his or her body or mental functions, and they are unable to work because of it.

Assurance of Support

You must have a commitment by a person prepared to provide you with an Assurance of Support(AoS).

An AoS is a legal commitment by a person (can be the sponsor or anyone) to repay to the Australian Government certain welfare payments paid to migrants during their respective AoS period. An AoS is also a commitment to provide financial support to the person applying to migrate, so that they will not have to rely on social welfare payments.

An AoS period under Parent visa is 2 years and it commences from the date of:

visa grant, for applicants in Australia

arrival on the migrant visa, for applicants outside Australia.

As a Parent category visa applicant, an AoS bond (held for 2 years) of AUD$ 5,000 is required for the main applicant and $2000 for any adult secondary applicant and the same has to be provided before the visa is granted.

Health & Character

Australia has strict health and character requirements. The same has to be met before grant of visa. The applicants will be required to:

• Undergo a medical examination and chest x-ray (if over 11 years of age), to be undertaken by one of a panel of doctors selected by the Australian authorities, and;
• Obtain police certificates for all countries in which they have lived for more than 12 months in the 10 years leading up to the application.

Processing Time

The current processing time is 4 - 6 months from the start of the process.