Australian Visa Charge Increases 2017
Visa Application Charge increases – 1 July 2017
Australian Visa Application Charges (VAC), those sometimes painful payments to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) for Australian visa applications, traditionally go up every year on 1 July. And usually they are CPI-indexed, so you tend to think "Hey, well I guess that figures". Then of course they had to go and have a series of out-of-all proportion Visa Application Charge increases in 2014 and 2015, and thus we have the partner visa charges that we have now.
And naturally, our Down Under Visa clients have been worried about 1 July 2017 and whether the fees will be scary or not. Well, despite Mr Turnbull's moods of late with abolition of 457 visas for overseas workers and the extreme changes to citizenship requirements, the increases to visa application charges which will come into effect on 1st of July 2017 are only moderate! They are merely in line with the CPI (Consumer Price Index). Nothing scary at all!
And note please that:
(a) The new charges will apply to all visas lodged after 1 July 2017
(b) They won't affect any applications already in the system before that date
(c) Down Under Visa have no control over this, and can't hold previously quoted Department fees
(d) We cannot lodge poorly-prepared rush-job visa applications at the very last minute
Changes that will affect visa types that Down Under Visa manage will be listed below:
New Visa Application Charges – from July 2017
Partner Visas (all, ie. 300, 309 and 820)
Current VAC: $6,865.00
New VAC: $7,000.00
Partner Visas (820 for 300-holders)
Current VAC: $1,145.00
New VAC: $1,170.00
New Zealand Citizen Family Relationship (461)
Current VAC: $325.00
New VAC: $330.00
Child (101 or 445)
Current VAC: $2,370.00
New VAC: $2,415.00
I hope that all who read this are breathing a sigh of relief. Nothing excessive or opportunistic here. Sanity seems to have prevailed in the hallowed halls in Canberra at least for this budget.
Who are Down Under Visa? Who is Jeff Harvie?
Jeff Harvie and the Down Under Visa team have been doing this for a lot of years! Down Under Visa have brought thousands of couples to Australia from South East Asia over the years. Mostly from the Philippines, but we help increasing numbers of couples where the visa applicant is from China, Thailand, Vietnam or Cambodia. And what this means is we see a lot of success....and we also see failures when people go it alone after talking to their mate, or their relative, or that minimal-care-no-responsibility Facebook group run by Steve and Maribeth based on their own visa application! One application, and they feel qualified to advise others! It's not even LEGAL to do that!
Want to bring your sweetheart to Australia from The Philippines, China, Thailand, Vietnam or Cambodia? Get a FREE VISA ASSESSMENT today! It will take you five minutes.
