The old man has finally decided he *is* going to try to stay on over here so rang a Migration Agent to discuss the pros and cons of any ways they could suggest. After some hiccoughs and some false starts we finally ‘made contact’… well *I* did anyway… the old man was still in the dentist suffering.
What we were originally suggesting was putting in an application… and when the inevitable rejection came… we’d appeal, the appeal against the appeal… and so on as we worked our way up the chain til we reached, the MP and onwards. This, we have heard, can take up to 10 years so figured it was as good an option as any.
We were wrong.
Seems the only way to get that sort of thing going is to make a ‘valid application’ to begin with… and while I have two siblings living in the UK the ‘balance of family’ rules are applied strictly… so hard luck on that score. And… of course… even if you *make* a valid application it might be knocked back depending on which of the faceless DIMIA drones your application lands in front of on any given day.
Of course this begs the question of how a valid application can be rejected but apparantly there are dozens of ways they can reject you even *if* your application is ‘valid’!
Whoop-de-doo.
So… what next? Well it appears the oldies just *might* be eligible for a ‘retirement visa’ but of course there are a few ‘interesting’ conditions. The two main ones are a strict requirement that he places a $750,000 bond with the government… which pays interest at a massive 2½% or so… or whatever the current rate is for government bonds.
If that alone isn’t bad enough… they need sponsorship… i.e. *state* sponsorship not personal… and NSW doesn’t do sponsorship for that visa type. The answer is… they go live in Queensland.
Ok this is a bit of a drawback… as if the $750,000 isn’t… but there might be a solution for this one. We just happen to have an investment property up there which we rent out. The solution is that we rent it to the old man… then bingo… problem solved. Except of course that they naturally want to live *here* with us.
This might work *if* they then come to us on an ‘extended holiday’ and have their mail redirected or something… except this leaves the house empty and vulnerable… and bearing in in mind this house is intended to be part of the eventual retirement fund… well you can see the problem.
Anyway, we’re going to push on a bit and see where it takes us… maybe we could buy a small shack in the buch and rent them that instead… shacks in the bush are relatively cheap… I’m told.
Please excuse me for a while… I’m going to go find a nice quiet wall to bang my head on.
The Eclectic Interweb 