What are the changes in the law?
On 28 November 2018, the Migration Amendment (Family Violence and Other Measures) Act 2018 passed both Houses of Parliament. On 10 December 2018, the Act received Royal Assent. At this time this Act has not yet come into effect, but it can come into effect at any date before the 10 June 2018 if a date is so proclaimed, and will be in effect on 11 June 2019
This Act that will bring into effect, amongst other requirements, that partner sponsorship applications must be approved before the partner visa applications can be lodged.
What impact does that have on my visa processing?
Offshore Visas
Once the new changes are in place, offshore visa applications are likely to take significantly longer to process. While is unclear how long the decision process of the sponsorship application will take, current process times are approximately 12 to 18 months. Therefore, processing times for an offshore sponsorship and partner visa can could potentially extend to over three years.
Onshore Visas
The new changes prevent onshore applicants from remaining in Australia during the processing of the sponsorship application, unless they have a substantive visa sufficient in time to cover the processing period, as they will not be able to lodge the onshore application and thereby obtain a bridging visa to remain lawfully in Australia.
Applicants who visit Australia on short-term visas may not be able to lodge applications onshore as the sponsorship application may not be approved before their visa expires.
If the applicant is forced to depart and lodge the partner visa outside of Australia, they will be required to remain outside of Australia until the Partner Visa is granted.
In short, these impeding changes significantly affect the ability of people to lodge partner visas in Australia as –
people in Australia without visas will not be able to validly lodge a partner visa in Australia and must depart Australia to lodge , and people on visas in Australia that expire before sponsorship approval will also have to depart and lodge the partner visa application offshore.
