Guides

Understand the process before you begin

Three written guides to the parts of the visa process people most often get stuck on. Each one is written from the official sources and shows you where to check them yourself.

General information, not legal advice. This page sets out how the law generally applies. It does not take account of your circumstances, and you should get advice about your own situation before acting on it. The official sources this page is written from are listed on it; where they differ from anything here, they are the authority.

These guides answer the questions people bring to a first conversation. Each one takes a single part of the process, sets out what the Department of Home Affairs is actually assessing, and shows you where that is published so you can read it for yourself.

They are general information rather than advice about your situation. If you are looking for a pathway rather than a topic, the visa pathways index groups them by what you are trying to do, and how we work sets out what a consultation involves.

If a decision has already been made

Read this one first. A refusal or a cancellation starts a time limit running, and it runs whether or not you have decided what to do.

What to do in the first days after a visa refusal

For anyone who has just been notified that a visa has been refused and is not sure what the letter means or how long they have. It answers how to read your decision record, where the review rights and the time limit appear in it, and what to check before you do anything else.

If you are preparing an application or waiting on one

What the Department is looking at while it decides, and what holds your status in Australia in the meantime.

Partner visa evidence: what the Department looks for

For couples putting a partner visa application together, whether onshore (subclass 820 and 801) or offshore (subclass 309 and 100). It answers what the four aspects of a relationship in the Migration Regulations 1994 mean in practice, and what sort of document speaks to each of them.

Bridging visas explained

For people applying from inside Australia who need to know what keeps them lawful while an application or a review is decided. It answers what the bridging visas are (subclass 010, 020, 030 and 050), when one comes into effect, and where to check the conditions attached to yours, including work rights.

What these guides are

Each guide describes how one part of the system generally works. It is not advice about your application and it cannot be, because almost every question in migration turns on facts a web page does not know: your visa history, the conditions on the visa you hold now, where you were when a decision was made and what is already on your record.

You will not find a fee, an hourly rate, a processing time or a success rate in any of them. Charges and indicative processing times are published by the Department of Home Affairs and they change. A number copied onto a law firm’s website goes out of date quietly, and a reader has no way of telling that it has. Where a guide needs one of those figures it links to the page that carries the current one.

Every guide lists the official sources it was written from and carries the date it was last checked against them. Where a source and a guide disagree, the source is right.

Immigration law changes often

Migration moves faster than most areas of Australian law. The criteria for a subclass sit in the Migration Regulations 1994 and can be amended by a new instrument without any change to the Migration Act 1958. Departmental policy on how those criteria are applied changes more often again, and a requirement can be renamed or replaced between one intake and the next.

The review system changed as well. On 14 October 2024 the Administrative Review Tribunal replaced the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which no longer exists. If you are holding an older letter, or reading an older article that refers to the AAT, the tribunal it means is now the ART.

That is why these guides point outward rather than trying to restate the law in full. A guide is a map of where to look. The official pages are the ground.

How to tell whether something has changed

Before you rely on anything written here, check it in the place that is authoritative for it. Four sources between them cover almost everything in these guides, and where one of them no longer matches what a guide says, follow the source. We would also be glad to be told, so the guide can be corrected.

The Department of Home Affairs, for the criteria, the charges and the indicative processing times for a subclass. Start at the visa list and open the page for the visa itself. The Department also keeps a news archive of changes as they are announced.
The Administrative Review Tribunal, for anything to do with review: whether a decision can be reviewed, who may apply and what the process involves. Its migration and refugee pages cover visa decisions, and changes to its own procedures appear under news and updates.
The Federal Register of Legislation, if you want the law itself. The compilation date shown at the top of the Migration Act 1958 and the Migration Regulations 1994 tells you how current the text in front of you is.
Your own decision record, if a decision has been made. It is the only document that states the review rights and the time limit that apply to you. That time limit is strict, and no general page, including this one, can tell you what it is or extend it.

Before you read on

The guides are easier to use with your own papers beside you. It is usually the dates that decide what you can still do.

The visa you hold now, and the date it ends
Any decision record or letter from the Department of Home Affairs, and the date on it
The time limit stated in that record, if it states one
Any request for more information, and the date you have to reply by
Your passport, and the passport of anyone included in the application