10+ Years Out of Australia — Subclass 155 RRV Still Granted
The client was granted Australian permanent residency over a decade ago but has barely set foot in Australia since — total time spent inside the country adds up to less than 1 year. With life and work circumstances now changing, they came to us to ask: how do I return to Australia, and which visa do I need?
Across roughly a month of daily back-and-forth, we worked with the client to surface every meaningful tie they had to Australia. A few months after lodgement, the Subclass 155 Resident Return Visa was finally granted — and the client could once again build a life in Australia.
Visa Grant Records
Authorised by clients · sensitive details redacted
The client’s reality: PR in hand, yet 10+ years away from Australian life
The client was granted Australian permanent residency over a decade ago, but they have barely been to Australia since. Total time spent inside the country across all those years adds up to less than 1 year. Now, with their work and life circumstances changing, they reached out to ask: how do I get back to settle in Australia, and which visa should I apply for?
Australia has no residence test, but the visa itself expires
Australia has no formal residence requirement: once you become a permanent resident, that status is yours for life unless it is cancelled. The permanent visa itself, however, does carry an expiry date — typically a first-grant 5-year travel facility that lets you enter and leave the country.
Think of it like owning a house: ownership is permanent, but the access card you need to come and go has an expiry date. Once it lapses, you have to apply for a new card or renew the existing one.
In this client’s case, the original permanent visa granted years earlier had long since expired. To return to Australia, they now needed a Subclass 155 Resident Return Visa. As the name suggests, this visa is designed to let Australian permanent residents return to — or remain in — Australia.
Subclass 155 difficulty varies dramatically with how long you have actually lived in Australia
The amount of time you have physically lived in Australia maps directly to how hard a Subclass 155 application is. This client falls squarely into the toughest of the three brackets — Bracket 3.
1. Lived in Australia for at least 2 of the last 5 years
As noted above, permanent visas — such as the Subclass 189 Skilled Independent visa or the Subclass 190 / 191 state-nominated skilled visas — are normally granted with a 5-year travel facility.
If, across those 5 years, the holder has lived in Australia for at least 2 years (cumulative — no need to be continuous), the Department will generally grant a fresh 5-year Subclass 155 RRV quickly and generously once the original visa expires.
The permanent visa is effectively an “access card.” If you stay inside the house and never leave, you don’t need it. So if your 5-year permanent visa lapses but you have no plans to leave Australia, you don’t have to rush a Subclass 155 application — your PR status itself is for life.
2. Less than 2 years of residence in the last 5
If you have lived in Australia on and off but the cumulative total falls short of 2 years, a Subclass 155 application now requires you to evidence additional ties to Australia.
Examples include children studying in Australia, property holdings, immediate family members in Australia and similar links — in short, you need to prepare extra documentation.
3. Many years away from Australia
This is the extreme extension of Bracket 2: the time span is longer and the share of time actually spent in Australia is smaller. Difficulty peaks here.
By the same token, applicants in this bracket usually struggle to surface ties to Australia, and the Department finds it correspondingly harder to believe they will genuinely settle here this time round.
Extremely rare: under 1 year in 10+ years — and the previous Subclass 155 was granted but never used
This client falls into Bracket 3. We have handled plenty of long-absence cases — 8, 9, 10 years — but 10+ years with a total stay under 1 year is a genuinely rare and extreme scenario.
As we dug deeper into the client’s background, a second pain point surfaced — and it needed careful framing. A few years earlier the client had already lodged a Subclass 155 application, it had been granted, yet they never entered Australia to use it. From the Department’s perspective, they had been trusted with a second chance and effectively wasted it.
A 1,000-plus-word submission letter and a month of deep client work — surfacing every single tie to Australia
A previous Subclass 155 grant followed by a no-show entry record paints a poor picture for the Department. Our strategy: meet impression with evidence, meet doubt with detail.
Reconstruct the previous Subclass 155 application end-to-end
- Map out the full background and reasons behind the previous Subclass 155 grant going unused
- Spell out the client’s real circumstances at the time in a submission letter of more than 1,000 words
- Address the Department’s legitimate concern that the applicant had “broken trust”
Surface every genuine tie the client has to Australia
- Roughly a month of daily, structured conversations with the client
- Mapped the client’s ties to Australia across family, lifestyle and career
- Turned every provable connection into evidence ready for lodgement
Demonstrate the client’s genuine intent to return — with evidence
- Words alone do not move the Department — they need to see proof
- Packaged the client’s real plans to settle this time round into verifiable documentation
- The client’s patience and cooperation were a decisive factor in the result
A few months after lodgement, the Subclass 155 Resident Return Visa was finally granted — and the client could once again build a life in Australia.
Granted: the client restarts life in Australia
An extreme-difficulty Subclass 155 case turned around — from “bad first impression” to “granted” — on the back of a 1,000-plus-word submission letter and a month of deep ties-discovery work.
PR in hand but 10+ years away from Australia? We have handled more than one of these
We have walked many similar cases through to a successful Subclass 155 RRV grant — permanent residents who had been away from Australia for 8, 9, 10 years, and longer.
If you or someone in your family is dealing with a “permanent visa about to expire / already expired,” “less than 2 years of residence in Australia,” or “previous Subclass 155 granted but never used” situation, get in touch for a complimentary initial assessment.
- Permanent visa has expired or is about to expire and you want to settle back in Australia
- Less than 2 years of residence in Australia in the last 5, with worries about a Subclass 155 refusal
- Previous Subclass 155 was granted but never activated — you want to reset the Department’s impression
- You need help mapping family, property, employment and other Australian ties into supporting evidence
PR is not the same as a visa — and the access card itself can expire
Whether yours is a textbook renewal (2 years of residence in 5) or an extreme 10+ years-away case, we can help you build the evidence, tell the full story of your ties to Australia, and put every single Subclass 155 application on solid ground.
Get a free assessment of my Subclass 155 / 157 application →
