Health Examinations for Australian Visa Applications
For most applications, health examinations are usually required as it is a public interest criterion for almost all visa categories. The examinations required will depend on the duration of your stay.
For some permanent visas, there is a requirement that even non-migrating family members are required to meet the health requirement. This can create frustrating results where a particular family member is estranged or not locatable.
Our office has also seen this occur quite often.
What is the legal Health Requirement?
For the visas that require non-migrating family members to also meet the health requirement, the regulations also provide leeway for this requirement to be set aside in circumstances that would be considered ‘unreasonable’.
Why Do Officers Still Require Health Examinations to be Completed?
In our experience, even if a family member is estranged or not longer contactable, officers will still pinpoint on this requirement and require the health examination to be completed before they grant the visa.
This is because ‘unreasonable’ is not defined in the legislation so officers often have their own interpretation.
Under the policy guidelines – at first instance –
it is considered ‘unreasonable’ for Non-Migrating Family Members to complete health examinations. That is, NonMigrating Family Members are not ordinarily required to complete health examinations.
Therefore, unless there are specific circumstances and strong reasons, the officers should not be requiring a non-migrating family member to complete health examinations.
If you are one of the people who are affected by this, we suggest that you seek professional advice so you are fully aware of your rights.
How Can Agape Henry Crux Help
If you require assistance in meeting health requirements, you can contact our immigration lawyers and migration agents at info@ahclawyers.com or call us on +61 2 7200 2700. Our team are highly trained to assist with highly complex matters.
We speak fluent English, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, Indonesian, Burmese and Malay. If these aren’t your language, we can also help you arrange an interpreter.