Growing old, growing apart: Australia's parent visa changes leave families in limbo

Pregnant with her second child and due in December, Nguyen Truong Hong Diep, a Melbourne resident of Vietnamese origin, has got a small house beside hers for her mother.

It would give her mother privacy while keeping her close to her family. Diep hopes her mother can be there in the first days after the delivery when she will need both practical help and emotional support.

"Only my mother makes me feel pampered and cared for," Diep tells VnExpress International. "She can help me cook and take turns looking after the baby so I can get a few hours of sleep."

Diep still cooks, cares for her three-year-old daughter and does the housework after each workday, despite the demands of pregnancy. "Every day I wish my mother were here. I don't have enough time to take care of myself."

As her due date approaches, she still does not know if her mother will be able to settle in Australia. Her mother's visa application has been awaiting a decision since 2019.

Diep chose a contributory parent visa, which allows eligible parents of Australian citizens or permanent residents to settle permanently in the country. "I have paid about A$5,000 (roughly $3,500) in application fees and will have to pay around A$50,000 more when my mother is granted the visa," she says.

She had hoped her mother would receive a visa in 2027 after learning from a Facebook group that someone who applied in November 2018 had been issued one.

But families with parents waiting overseas faced greater uncertainty after Australia changed its family visa processing priorities in late July.

Under the revised Department of Home Affairs policy, eligible applications made in Australia for visas that can also be granted within the country are prioritized over those submitted from abroad.

A Home Affairs spokesperson tells the ABC that the changes were introduced "to place downwards pressure on Net Overseas Migration (NOM)".

The spokesperson says the adjustments to the permanent migration program aim to reduce net overseas migration while shortening waiting times for applicants who are already living, working and contributing in Australia.

Before the July policy change, parent visa applications lodged this year were estimated to take an average of 15 to 33 years to process, according to the Home Affairs website.

Families now fear even longer delays. The last notice Diep received from immigration authorities, about a year or two ago, merely said her mother's application remained in the queue.

"They said processing would take six years. But more than six years have passed and we still haven't received any news or updates," she says. "I just want to know where the application is in the queue and how much longer we have to wait."

Arjun, an Indian man who moved to Australia seven years ago, is also worried about the changes.

He lives and works in Sydney and has not seen his parents in India for nearly two years. He wants to be closer to them, but his work makes moving home difficult.

"If they could come and live here, they would certainly help me a lot," he says. "Normally, I have to do everything myself, from cleaning to cooking. But whenever my parents visit, they take care of everything."

In May 2025, he had applied for contributory parent visas for both parents, knowing they might have to wait many years before they could live together permanently. "My parents are only 53 and can still take care of themselves. But in another 10 to 12 years, they may need me to care for them, both emotionally and financially."

He worries that the government will keep extending processing times without resolving the backlog.

If the visas have still not been granted in 10 to 15 years and his parents need care, he would move back to India, he says. "We just want to spend time together."

An online petition calling for improvements to partner visa processing and an end to excessive waits has also attracted nearly 1,500 signatures.

Australia has capped permanent family visas at 52,460 for the 2026–27 financial year. Of those, 7,060 places are reserved for parents, the smallest allocation in a decade outside the Covid period. The parent visa backlog stretched over decades despite repeated attempts to address it, the 2023 "Review of the Migration System" found.

The cost to taxpayers is one reason for limiting parent visas, the review said. It estimated that a skilled migrant provides an average net fiscal benefit of about A$200,000 ($140,000) over a lifetime, while a parent migrant costs A$400,000 because of greater use of publicly funded services and relatively low tax contributions.

Diep disagrees with this claim, however, saying her mother will not receive welfare benefits during her first 10 years in Australia, and her family has to support her financially.

Diep and her husband both have full-time jobs and pay some A$60,000 (roughly $42,000) in taxes each year.

The family also has to demonstrate that it can afford to support her mother in Australia. "I don't think my mother will become a burden on the government, because we are fully able to support her financially and take care of her," Diep says.

Older migrants' economic impact should be considered alongside the unpaid support they provide their families, Dr. Nguyen Thi Hien, a researcher at Australia's Edith Cowan University, says.

Many grandparents help with cooking, childcare, and housework, allowing their adult children to keep working or studying. Those contributions are difficult to capture fully in calculations of migration costs, she points out.

Repeated travel between countries to care for relatives can also make it difficult for grandparents to access healthcare, maintain an income and balance family responsibilities, she says. "Emotional support can be provided from a distance, but hands-on care requires family members to be near one another."

Immigration lawyer James Hammond says how the new priorities would affect overseas applicants already facing lengthy waits remained unclear.

He argues that lowering the priority of overseas parent applications would do little to reduce net migration. Those categories account for only a small number of visas each year, and applicants already face long waits, making the change difficult to justify as a way to meet the government's migration objective.

Navjot Singh Kailay, who has worked as a migration agent in Melbourne for almost a decade, tells The Guardian some clients' parents have died before their visa applications were processed.

The hardships families faced, including losing parents while waiting for permanent residence, could be difficult to come to terms with, he says.

More than 1,500 parent visa applicants died before getting their visas during the 21 months to March 31, new Home Affairs figures show, underscoring the length of the delays.

Australia's parent visa rules are the harshest among comparable countries, Abul Rizvi, a former deputy secretary of immigration, admits.

Long waits left many applicants with almost no prospect of migrating successfully, the 2023 expert review of Australia's migration system warned. Given waits of 30 to 50 years and applicants' ages, accepting applications for visas unlikely ever to be granted was both harsh and needless, the review said.

While waiting for permanent residence, Diep's mother can visit Australia only on a tourist visa. She hopes to move soon into the small house her daughter has set up for her.

Diep also wants her mother to help the children retain their Vietnamese language and family traditions. But she is increasingly concerned about her mother's own need for care.

"My mother has aged a lot, and her health is not as good as it used to be. I want to be close to take care of her and be by her side."

"My mother lives alone in Vietnam. If she suddenly falls or has a heart attack, I won't be there to call an ambulance. We could miss the crucial window for getting her treatment. That really worries me."*Arjun is a pseudonym used at the interviewee's request.