Add your kids to your partner visa application

I think most of you are aware that you can bring your kids in your Australian partner visa or fiancée visa application right at the beginning. It’s always there and it’s always offered. In our visa assessment form that you first filled out, it asks if you are including children. And you will note that Down Under Visa don’t charge any extra for including your children in a partner visa application at the beginning. The DIBP do, of course. Nice little earner, no doubt. But we charge no extra professional fees, and we refuse to do so.

Why not a later Child Visa application?

We’ve had plenty of discussion on this on the Down Under Visa BLOG. We’ve discussed the pros and cons of including kids at the beginning, and of adding them later. And we stand by that. It’s a personal choice, and you should do what suits what is good for all of you. My reasons for many of those posts is to make sure you make your decisions based on the right reasoning.

I think two of the biggest reasons that kids are left behind are these:

• Concerns about schooling
• Pressure and influence from Filipino relatives (the kids grandparents especially)

If your reasons are about letting mum settle in to Australia first? Perfectly reasonable, as are probably most of your personal reasons. I just don’t think that the two reasons above are logical reasons to separate a mum from her kids, and I hope that you think that through carefully before doing something you may later regret.

Schooling in Philippines is a very inflexible thing. Rules are rules, and everyone follows them to the letter. Must start and finish with the school year, and I see couples hoping they can fit visa grants in with school years and summer vacation…..which will never happen! The Department will never adjust their timing to fit in with anything. And Australian school years start and finish at different times to how they do in the Philippines. But the truth is that Australian schools are perfectly flexible and will take in a child based on their ability to cope at that particular grade level. They don’t care if the child finishes the year or not! They arrive in Australia, and they can start school!

And whilst parents, aunties and older siblings in the Philippines seem to express their opinions freely about the welfare of your kids, ladies please remember you are marrying an Australian and in Australia the actual parents are the only ones who really have a say in the welfare of the child. Your kids, your decision!

We had to deal with my father-in-law saying he would die without our daughter there, and with Mila’s older sister sending text messages supposedly from our daughter saying she in fact didn’t want to go to Australia at all. Plus, there was the fear that I would murder Mila by tossing her out the window to claim insurance money too, and maybe poor Remy would end up splattered on the pavement too! Buy one, take one! They were completely wrong obviously, and they were overstepping into a mum-and-dad-only area. Make your decisions as a family, and establish your new family-unit’s independence from your family in the Philippines as soon as you can.

Why not bring the kids later? And why did I write this BLOG article in the first place?

We’re having a number of clients at the moment who have applied for partner visas and not included their kids, and are now very clearly wishing they had acted differently.

The facts about bringing children to Australia

• The easiest way to bring them is added to your partner visa! It’s very little extra work, and when your visa is granted, so is theirs! You get a Subclass 300? So do they. 309 or 820 visas? So do they!
• If you apply for child visas later, it means you will be apart for anywhere between 1 year and maybe 3 years after the lady arrives in Australia. Do not think you can just grab them and bring them over whenever you feel like it.
• Child visas cost more.
• And getting tourist visas for kids you left behind is by no means a sure-thing. The Department have an intense dislike of people trying to take shortcuts. If you apply for a partner visa, then suddenly you are wanting child-left-off-application to come and take a holiday? Will that look suspicious to them? Well, it looks suspicious to me, and if you are honest I think you will admit the same about yourself. This is especially the case with younger kids. Who would bring 6 year old child to Australia for a holiday to visit his mum, and then happily put him back on a plane in 3 months time?

The point I’m making is this! Make up your mind! Will you be OK about your kids being apart from you for several years or not? If not, then forget about school years and ignore what Auntie Jing Jing says and include the child in the partner visa application.