[pamela1226]

I'm an Australian Citizen, and my husband is Korean. I used to live in Hong Kong for work, and moved to Korea after we get married 1.5 years ago. We plan to lodge Partner Visa in January in Korea, and I know the visa will take around 12 months to process.

My husband wants us to move to Aust. early in April next year, he has a valid tourist visa. My questions are:

1. Does he need to back to Korea after the visa was granted?

2. Tourist visa only allow him to stay in Australia for 3 months, will he able to get a bridging visa after 3 months?

3. If not possible to get bridging visa, after his ETA expired, can he apply another a new ETA? Will it affect his Partner Visa application?

Thanks for your help!!

 

[pamela1226]

1. If the application was made offshore and he's onshore when they're ready to make a decision on the application, they will ask him to go offshore before a decision is made.

2. No. A bridging visa can be granted if an application for a substantive is lodged onshore (Australia). Since he will apply offshore then he will not qualify for a bridging visa.

3. He can apply but there's no guarantee that it will be granted. He could go offshore and come back to reset the 3 months (although he may be stopped at the border and questioned but personally I was able to reset my 3 month stay 3 times without ever being stopped and questioned but I spent a few months offshore between visits).

Hope this helps

Thx Raman!!

For point 3, since ETA only valid for 1 year, and he need to apply after expiry. Is it allow to apply the tourist visa again, since his 309 application is still in process?

 

[pamela1226]

Thx Raman!!

For point 3, since ETA only valid for 1 year, and he need to apply after expiry. Is it allow to apply the tourist visa again, since his 309 application is still in process?

I'm sorry, I don't understand your question.

He needs to be offshore to apply for ETA.

What visa does he hold currently? What subclass?

He's holding tourist visa, applied thru ETA and it will only valid for 1 year. After expiry, he need to apply ETA again for tourist visa. So is he allow to apply the tourist visa since he will have 309 application in progress at that time? Or he need to stay offshore until 309 approve?

 

[pamela1226]

The ETA is not intended for long term stays, so even though it allows 3 month stay period with entry for the year it is valid, if he stays for 3 months, leaves to reset the stay period and comes straight back, it's likely they'll eventually stop him for using the ETA that way.

If you want him here, why not apply onshore? He can enter as a tourist on the ETA and if he likes it, he can decide to apply for the partner visa here instead. That would be an onshore partnee visa application which comes with the bridging visa A for when the ETA stay period expires. He'd be given full work rights on the BVA but no travel rights, so if he wanted to leave the country on the BVA he'd need to apply for a temporary BVB that allows BVA holder to leave and reenter Australia.

If you still want to apply offshore, then consider doing a visitor visa application. They often grant those with longer stay periods (6 months or even 12 months) and are more intended for staying for longer periods, unlike the ETA.

Thanks for your advice!!

Because the application processing time for offshore is shorter than onshore, that's why we think of apply by offshore. Let me discuss with my hubby again.