When to apply for a child visa (subclass 101)

[Hunts]

My wife, daughter and I received our 189 visa grants last year on 1 September which we activated in March. We are currently living in Dubai and plan on moving to Australia in the second half of next year. Last week Wednesday my wife gave birth to a little boy in Dubai so he is entitled to a South African passport which we will apply for as soon as we receive his UAE birth certificate.

 

My question is how should I go about applying for his 101 visa? We could start the process as soon as we receive his SA passport. The official website says that these visas are taking up to 11 months to issue (75% of applicants) and 14 months (90% of applicants). If we apply and the visa is issued within a few months we might have to activate the visa before we intend moving there which would mean another holiday and the cost of more flights. If the visa takes too long we might be ready to move and he won't have a visa.

 

The alternative (according to my agent who helped with our 189 visas) is to not apply for the visa until we have moved to Australia. We would need to apply for a visitor's visa and request that it is void of an 8503 (no further stay condition) and once we are onshore we can apply for the child visa. The benefit of applying for a child visa onshore is that the baby will be issued with a bridging visa whilst holding a visitor’s visa and this will allow the baby to remain in Australia until such time the visa is decided. 

 

Has anyone recently been though this and which route did you decide on? If we apply for the child visa once we are living in Australia will the time that my son spends in the country on the visit visa count towards his citizenship or will the four years only start once his child visa is granted? 

[TamTam]

Hi there

 

I can help on this one as I’ve recently gone through the process. We applied for and received my sons 101 in March 2018 and it was a long wait for it. We submitted end June. The following is relevant to your questions:

 

1. We waited for the case officer to request the medical because the waiting period is so long we didn’t want the medical to expire 

2. We were worried that our newly issued PCC would expire or would cause them to grant a visa with a really short time to activation but we were really happy when we received the grant we were given a full year to activate. 

3. My 189 agent advised to go the 101 route and to go the visitors visa route if the wait was threatening our arrival date since we had to arrive by October this year. 

4. Doing the 101 visa offshore is a painful process and if you can do it onshore rather I would go for it simply because the waiting drove me crazy. However I wouldn’t assume the 8503 condition  will definitely be waived. Your agent knows better than me but I’ve heard the route you’re proposing of visitors visa then applying onshore isn’t as straight forward as it seems. I’ve read the Immigration Department is not particularly fond of this approach. But maybe ask one of the agents on the forum to confirm this. 

5. Don’t forget you’ll need new PCC for all the places you and your wife have lived in the past ten years (each place for 12 plus months). 

 

Feel free to shoot more questions my way. I have jet lag so I’m awake 😕

[Hunts]

Hi @TamTam thanks for the help. We have decided to apply for the visa as soon as the passport is ready. We should be getting my son's UAE birth certificate in the next few days and then we will go to the SA consulate in Dubai to apply for the passport and for our SA police clearance. We will pay to get it expedited so we could get the passport back with 5-6 weeks and the PC within a month. Luckily UAE police clearance takes only 24 hours! We will also do the medical so that when we submit the final application it will be 'decision ready'. Hopefully by doing it this way we will get the visa as quickly as possible. If we happen to get the visa earlier than expected and we need to activate the visa before we intend moving to Australia then we will just have to do that. It will be a small price to pay knowing that we would all have PR visas.

 

I see that as a sponsor you need to provide 'a letter from their employer confirming length of employment and annual salary or Pay Slips'. Do you know if pay slips are sufficient as I don't want to ask my employer for a letter as we are only moving later next year and they obviously don't know that?

[TamTam]

I would imagine pay slips are sufficient. Good luck with the application. 

[Ruizinho]

Will the sponsor and the baby be requested to do medicals. On paying and submitting documents they did babys Biometrics should i be doing medicals as the sponsor or wait for them to request them?

 

[TamTam]

Only a medical for the baby is needed. The advice I was given is to wait for the case officer to request the medical since the processing times are long and the medical could expire whilst you're waiting and then you need to do another one. However if you're willing to risk having to do the medical again (means paying again) then do it first and submit the results with the application and then it will move faster.

 

No biometrics are required and no blood tests for babies.

[Hunts]

We received our son's 101 child visa grant yesterday. We submitted the application offshore in Dubai on 12 September 2018, the medical was requested on 18 September and it was carried out on 19 September so the whole process took just over a month. Only have to activate by next year September by which time we plan to have already moved there permanently. Thanks for the help @TamTam.

[Ruizinho]

@TamTam Thank you for your help on this topic. We lodged the application in July and recieved the Visa 5 Oct 2018. So we are now able to make the move. Thank you all who contributed. and for thos who read this later....i am happy to be of assistance for those who need. See you all down under...