Visa Application Charge increases – 1 July 2017

Australian Visa Application Charges (VAC), those sometimes painful payments to the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) for Australian visa applications, traditionally go up every year on 1 July. And usually they are CPI-indexed, so you tend to think “Hey, well I guess that figures“. Then of course they had to go and have a series of out-of-all proportion Visa Application Charge increases in 2014 and 2015, and thus we have the partner visa charges that we have now.

And naturally, our Down Under Visa clients have been worried about 1 July 2017 and whether the fees will be scary or not. Well, despite Mr Turnbull’s moods of late with abolition of 457 visas for overseas workers and the extreme changes to citizenship requirements, the increases to visa application charges which will come into effect on 1st of July 2017 are only moderate! They are merely in line with the CPI (Consumer Price Index). Nothing scary at all!

And note please that:

(a) The new charges will apply to all visas lodged after 1 July 2017

(b) They won’t affect any applications already in the system before that date

(c) Down Under Visa have no control over this, and can’t hold previously quoted Department fees

(d) We cannot lodge poorly-prepared rush-job visa applications at the very last minute

Changes that will affect visa types that Down Under Visa manage will be listed below:

New Visa Application Charges – from July 2017

Partner Visas (all, ie. 300, 309 and 820)

Current VAC: $6,865.00

New VAC: $7,000.00

Partner Visas (820 for 300-holders)

Current VAC: $1,145.00

New VAC: $1,170.00

New Zealand Citizen Family Relationship (461)

Current VAC: $325.00

New VAC: $330.00

Child (101 or 445)

Current VAC: $2,370.00

New VAC: $2,415.00

I hope that all who read this are breathing a sigh of relief. Nothing excessive or opportunistic here. Sanity seems to have prevailed in the hallowed halls in Canberra at least for this budget.