HOW IS YOUR HEALTH?

Australia’s immigration system requires most visa applicants, including visitors, to be in good health, thereby minimising our exposure to possible public health and welfare expenditure claims.

In practice, visa applications involving a period of stay of less than 12 months (eg visitor applications) do not generally require a medical examination prior to visa grant unless an answer to a question in the application form would trigger a request for an examination to be done.

Further, some visa subclasses such as the onshore protection visa do not contain any health criteria that must be satisfied by the visa applicant. Others, such as the subclass 444 special category visa which is available to New Zealand citizens, requires that the applicant not be a “health concern non-citizen” which is defined as a person who has active tuberculosis (TB) and who refuses to sign an undertaking to present to a Commonwealth Medical Officer within seven days of arrivalIn respect of all other visa subclasses, a visa can only be granted to a person if the  applicant meets the applicable health criteria for the visa.

Built into the regulatory system are provisions for “health waivers” that is, provisions which allow the strict health requirements to be set aside if certain circumstances are present. These waivers are only available to particular visa subclasses and if a visa applicant believes that he/she may have a health issue which could be of concern to the authorities it would be sensible to seek advice from an immigration lawyer before applying for a visa as the waiver criteria does vary according to the class of visa applied for.