Taking Thai Wife To Live In Oz - She Has British Passport

[kiwisr]

I'm an NZ citizen but we currently live in the UK, we have a 2yo child. My Thai wife now has her UK passport.

Basically I am now wanting to return to Australia, where I worked previously, so need to look at how I get my wife and son over there and what the best route is.

1) I can apply for a resident visa at the Australian embassy in London, but this can take a long time, many months and it may not suit our timeframes.

2) My wife and son can just get ETA's in their passports and come to Australia, then subsequently apply for a residence visa once there (or fly to Auckland if it has to be made outside of the country)

My wife doesn't work and my son is not of school age yet, so there is no need of any thing that would breach the tourist visa, but is it possible to do the 2nd option? Is any method going to be better than the other?

[gburns57au]

I'm an NZ citizen but we currently live in the UK, we have a 2yo child. My Thai wife now has her UK passport.

Basically I am now wanting to return to Australia, where I worked previously, so need to look at how I get my wife and son over there and what the best route is.

1) I can apply for a resident visa at the Australian embassy in London, but this can take a long time, many months and it may not suit our timeframes.

2) My wife and son can just get ETA's in their passports and come to Australia, then subsequently apply for a residence visa once there (or fly to Auckland if it has to be made outside of the country)

My wife doesn't work and my son is not of school age yet, so there is no need of any thing that would breach the tourist visa, but is it possible to do the 2nd option? Is any method going to be better than the other?

Tricky one.....

The different passports creates some different scenarios to what we usually handle.

http://www.immi.gov.au/immigration.htm

Here is the Oz Immigration website...you may need a good read of that to start with.

The ETA to me sounds the better option....I cant see why it cant be done...it may require a few trips to NZ to satisfy the visa conditions.

I would contact the Embassy in London and try and get some assistance from them though.

Good Luck

[Mahout Angrit]

Again , no experience, but if you are an 'eligible NZ citizen' it looks pretty straightforward (she should apply as a British citizen) here and click along the numbers at the top (or bottom) of the page

Edited June 24, 2007 by Mahout Angrit

[samran]

Again , no experience, but if you are an 'eligible NZ citizen' it looks pretty straightforward (she should apply as a British citizen) here and click along the numbers at the top (or bottom) of the page

Here is a link to what you need: New Zealand Citizen Family Relationship (Temporary) Visa (Subclass 461)

As a related aside:

As a NZ citizen, you are allowed to live and work freely in Australia indefinetly and without the need for visa. Your family members are allowed to join you -regardless off ther nationality.

However due to changes in the social security arrangements between OZ and NZ, there are now different classes of NZ citizens in Australia. The first is what is referred to as an 'eligible NZ citizen'. These NZ'ers who were in Australia prior to the 26th of Jan 2001 and under Australian law are regaded as Permenant Residents due to the fact that NZ'ers who landed prior to that date were granted PR automatically upon arrival - and the rights that went along with them....which included paths to citizenship and the ability to bringing out family on visas which would eventually lead to PR and then citizenship (eg spousal visas given to Australian citizens and PR's).

Those who arrive after this date, while allowed to bring their family out, are restricted in the types of the social secuirty they can access (still pretty extensive, but slightly limited in some aspect), and their visa's are tied to the NZ citizen living in Australia. That is, the visa's are temporary in nature, and to gain permanent visas (ie PR) the applicants have jump though similar PR hoops that every nationality has to go through. Their are though, special paths that NZ citizens can go about applying for PR while in OZ, which aren't available to other nationalites.

Looking at the link I provided, it appears that you can apply for all these things while in australia...but it is best to double check with the high comiision in London

[kiwisr]

That's an interesting link, Thanks. I think I'll ask the consulate for some more details.

Does that mean that for an eligible NZ citizen it would be potentially easier for him to bring in a Thai wife than an Australian citizen? (In a similar way that EU citizens can easily get UK visas for Thai wives compared to UK citizens).

[samran]

I think the key difference is that as an eligble NZ citizen the visas you get for your family eventually lead to citizenship.

You should check with Centrelink in australia to see if you meet the requirements of an eligible NZ citizen. You mentioned you worked in australia in the past....

[kiwisr]

I spoke with a lady at the Australian Embassy at London, who was very friendly and helpful.

She said we really had 2 options.

1) Apply for the residence, which takes 8-12 weeks (fastest processing in the world apparently) which would be best in the long-term if my wofe wanted to eventually become a citizen.

2) Apply under the NZ Citizen Family relationship (Subclass 461) which takes 25-30 working days, is a temporary visa that lasts for 5 years and you can just keep renewing, or apply for residences once in Australia.

She didn't recommend entering Australia as a tourist as if questioned by immigration on arrival what her intentions are she could be refused entry on the grounds she isn't a genuine visitor. (Of course that's the official line, we could always go on a 2 week holiday and then "change" our minds.)

The residence visa will require a large fee, as well as full medicals and police certificates (from Thailand and the UK). The other 461 visa will just require an application and a fee of $185 - so is a lot cheaper and easier in the first instance.