Parents are entitled for migration to Australia if children living in Australia are sponsoring the parents. The children of the applicant must be Australian citizens or permanent residents. To be eligible for this visa, one must pass the “balance of family test”. Passing the test will mean that the applicants will have more children in Australia than in any part of the world, and the sponsors are settled in Australia.

There are certain conditions when applying for a parent visa. If the applicant is a working age parent, then the application must be lodged outside Australia, where Aged Parents can lodge their applications within Australia. To be considered as an aged parent, a male parent must be 65 years or more, where qualifying age for a female aged parent will be between 60 to 65 years of age. The number of places available for parents and aged parents category are 1500. Due to this reason, applicants will experience a substantial wait until their applications are decided.

However, a new category of parents visa was introduced in March 2003. This is called “Contributory Parent Visa Scheme”. The aim of this visa scheme is to speedy the process and there are 5000 places available under this scheme. Nevertheless, the applicant must anticipate to bear a substantial fee that is payable to the Department of Immigration.