Australia’s New Visitor Visa Rules Leave Families Facing an Impossible Choice: Stay or Return Overseas to Care for Ageing Parents
Australia’s new “no further stay” visitor visa condition could force migrants to choose between their lives in Australia and caring for ageing parents overseas, as parent visa waits stretch from 18 to more than 42 years.
‘Our whole life is here’
Jen moved from South Africa to Australia in 2008 as an international student. She has since married, had children, become an Australian citizen and built what she describes as her whole life in the country.
In 2018, she applied for a Contributory Parent visa so her parents could eventually join her in Australia. Her mother died in 2022 before the visa was processed. Eight years after lodging the application, her widowed father is still waiting.
Until now, Jen’s father has travelled regularly between South Africa and Australia to spend time with her and his grandchildren. She fears the new visitor visa rules will make even those visits harder.
“It really impacts our family because we don’t have multi-generational care and family around, and my parents don’t know my kids as intimately as we wish they would,” Jen told SBS News.
She now faces a choice she never expected: remain in Australia and maintain a long-distance relationship with her father, or move her Australian husband and Australian-born children to South Africa.
“Our whole life is here,” she said. “So if we want to reunite with my dad, I have to move the whole family over either back to South Africa with my Australian kids and my Australian husband and then restart our lives there, or we do this long-distance family thing.”
What the ‘no further stay’ rule changes
The “no further stay” condition requires visitor visa holders to leave Australia before applying for another visa. The government says the measure is intended to ensure visitor visas are used only by genuine visitors, rather than as a route to extending a stay in Australia, and to curb so-called visa hopping.
Melbourne-based registered migration agent Gary Grewal said the change is affecting families who were never the intended target.
Previously, parents who met age requirements could enter Australia on a visitor visa, apply for a parent visa from within the country and remain on a bridging visa while awaiting a decision.
“Now with the no further stay condition, they cannot apply for these visas,” Grewal said. “So the reality is they need to go back and wait overseas.”
He added that visitor visas granted to parents have become more restrictive in recent years. Where parents once received longer stays, more recent visas have often allowed significantly shorter periods in Australia, reducing the time families can spend together.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said in July that the parent visa backlog was something the government was working to address, but that there were no easy answers.
Department of Home Affairs data shows there were 157,000 parent visas in the backlog in the 2024-25 financial year, an increase of 52,000 compared with six years earlier.
Waits that outlast applicants
The new visitor visa restrictions come amid exceptionally long parent visa processing times.
Visa typeApproximate costEstimated processing timeContributory Parent visaAbout $49,00018 years Aged Parent visaCheaper alternative for eligible pension-age parentsMore than 42 years
For Jen, those timelines have become painfully personal as her father ages.
“Even though we’re in the queue, we can’t have my dad stay here and just wait it out until the visa’s granted,” she said.
“If you do the maths, your parent has to be 109 years old to get that visa. There’s no human filter to these policies that they’re putting in place.”
Almost half of Australians have at least one parent born overseas, according to 2021 Census data. Grewal said annual caps on parent visas have contributed to growing queues, leaving families separated for years or even decades.
“It’s a big toll on the family for what you want to do, which is spend time with your ageing parents,” Jen said.
‘What is the solution for me?’
For Sandhya, who moved from the United States to Western Australia about a decade ago, the issue is not immediate - but she worries it could become urgent.
She and her partner are Australian citizens and are raising their children in Australia. Her parents, who live in India and are in their 70s and 80s, are currently healthy and active.
But Sandhya had assumed that if one of them became seriously ill, lost their partner, or could no longer live independently, there would be a pathway to bring them to Australia. She no longer believes that is certain.
“It only takes a fall or an illness or a loss of one of them for the situation to become really urgent and for me to want to bring them here permanently,” she said.
“The only option is for us to apply for an aged parent visa, but that’s going to take decades. One or two years is a reasonable time, but what is with 10 to 20 years? If you’re applying for your parents, are you expecting them to live to 150?”
Sandhya said she and her partner have paid almost $2 million in taxes since arriving in Australia and would happily support their parents financially if they came.
“For us to not have any pathway to bring our parents here, that’s a very worrying prospect,” she said. “So what is the solution for me? I would have to move back to India, but my kids are building their lives here.”[sbs.com]
The cost to families
Grewal said the loss of bridging visa pathways means family reunification is increasingly dependent on wealth and personal circumstances.[sbs.com]
He pointed to one Perth family that withdrew a parent visa application because they could not afford the costs. When the father later suffered a serious accident in India, his son had to leave Australia to care for him.
Grewal also cited a couple - a GP and a psychiatrist - who had lived in Australia for 15 years before permanently relocating to India to be with their ageing parents.
“It is very difficult,” he said. “Families are going to be split for at least a decade. Grandparents can’t see their grandchildren. They can’t help with their children’s families.”
He believes Australia risks losing skilled migrants to countries offering faster and more practical family reunification options.
Sandhya wants the government to consider the human impact of migration policy and rejects the narrative that immigrants are “resource-hungry”.
“People from other countries are legitimate contributors to society here, and we have to find pathways for when they’re in a vulnerable state and need support,” she said.
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