The Parent Visa Online Lodgement System Is Officially Live!
Just last week, we told you that parent migration would step into the online-application era on 22 April.
First thing this morning, we put it to the test — and sure enough, a Parent Visa option has now been added under the Family category in ImmiAccount (see the header image).
This means the paper-based mail-in applications for parent migration that have frustrated everyone for years are now officially a thing of the past — you can switch straight to one-click online lodgement.
Australian Parent Visa Online Application Fees and the Advantages of Paying by BPAY
Online Application Benefits — A Big Step Forward for Parent Visa Applications
Previously, you had to spend a great deal of time printing and binding documents, and worry about mail going missing or processing delays.
Now, you simply register for an ImmiAccount and select the relevant category under New Application.
A quick heads-up: during this morning’s testing, we found that the Parent Visa category occasionally disappears from the system. Some accounts can see it, while for others it vanishes after they log in, or they have to log out and back in repeatedly. This is most likely because the system has only just gone live and the servers are not yet stable.
If you’re not in a hurry, we suggest waiting 1-2 days for the system to settle before proceeding.
If you need to lodge urgently, you can try clearing your browser cache, switching browsers, or refreshing the page a few times.
Another Major Perk of Online Parent Visa Applications: BPAY Payment Is Now Supported!
Previously, paper applications could only be paid by card, which incurred a surcharge of around 14%.
Take the Subclass 143 visa as an example:
Main applicant visa fee: $5,040 (around $5,110 if paid by card)
Main and secondary applicants together: $6,740 (around $6,834 if paid by card)
Paying by BPAY now waives this surcharge, so lodging for the main and secondary applicants together saves nearly $100 (the system still doesn’t offer BPAY at the moment, so we’re hoping it will be added in a future update).
A reminder: among the parent migration documents, although Form 47PA has now moved online, Form 40 — which the sponsor must complete (Figure 2) — still has to be filled out on paper the old-fashioned way, signed, and then scanned and uploaded.
This path is almost identical to the partner migration reforms of years past: applicants first fill in their part online, and the sponsor forms are then gradually brought into the system. So parent migration will most likely go through the very same process. As for moving the sponsor forms online, we’ll take it as it comes and give the Department of Home Affairs some time to work through it.
For now, apart from parent migration, the other Family visas — such as child migration, the Subclass 838 (Aged Dependent Relative) visa, or the Remaining Relative visa, and so on — are all still paper-based applications that must be mailed to the immigration office in Perth for manual processing. Family migration really has fallen a step behind on online lodgement, so we hope the Department will seize this parent visa rollout to get the other categories sorted as soon as possible!
Finally, a processing update: for the Subclass 143 visa, requests for further documents have now reached applications lodged up to mid-November 2018. The FOI file-retrieval data is still on its way, and as soon as there’s an update I’ll publish an estimate table as quickly as I can!
