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.
