Affect of parents residence visa medical on visit visa application?

[junaidmaq]

Hello,

I am planning to apply residence visa for my parents (ages 70 yrs approx). I checked the criteria for acceptable standard of health in ops manual and also browsed through the posts on this forum. It seems to me that the criteria is quite tough for people of this age. Though my parents do not have any communicable or infectious disease but my father takes medication for blood pressure and had one spell of pneumonia last year while my mother has mild coronary artery disease (she is on medication for past 5 years, ECGs etc are normal). For these reasons I am afraid the residence visa application might be rejected on health grounds.

The question I have is, if the residence visa is indeed rejected, for health reasons other than any communicable or infectious disease, is there still a risk that this will impact any future visit visa applications?

Please guide.

Thanks,
JM

[JandM]

The health conditions you describe do not sound as though they would be likely to attract a negative reaction. Many people here will tell you that "ordinary" ailments which are controlled by well-understood and widely used drugs are no problem at all. Your parents' medicals would almost certainly be referred to a Medical Assessor, who would want to see a doctor's letter and perhaps some recent test results, to understand that their condition is being regulated and is steady on their normal medications, but if their present doctor(s) is/are happy with how they are getting on and will write to say so, this is no barrier.

Unless your parents' state of health changed drastically so it was unpredictable, again, there's no reason to think that it would be problem for any visa application, now or in the future.

[junaidmaq]

Thank you very much JandM for the clarification.

Basically its because of the "stories" we heard where people had bad experiences in this regard, for one reason or the other. Plus the fact that my parents do not intend to stay long-term in NZ anyway. Most probably they will not spend more than 3-6 months in any given year. So we were wondering whether we should "risk" applying for the residence visa given the "imperfect" health condition or just go with a visit visa.

So while I fully understood what you said, still, if we assume that the residence visa will be rejected on health grounds, do you think there is a risk that it will impact any visit visa applications in future as well?

[JandM]

IF... big if, and not likely, I think, on what you have described... your parents had a residence application rejected, then later applied for a different visa, they would be reassessed at the time, on the basis of the health requirements for that visa. See the various paragraphs here. https://www.immigration.govt.nz/opsmanual/#35154.htm
The conditions they have at the moment are not such as to raise problems for visiting, so, though their names would bring up their past application(s) in the INZ computer, that shouldn't make any difference.

I can remember a problem of the kind you're worrying about, and I'll mention it so you can see the wide difference between your parents' situation and the one which did cause difficulty. This was where someone wanted to bring in their elderly mother on a parent/grandparent visit visa (the kind which allows 18 months in NZ out of a three-year period), which requires a medical of the same standard as for residence. The mother was suffering from early stages dementia, and the intention was that her sister would accompany her as an ordinary visitor to deliver her to her adult children, then they would look after her, then she would again have an escort when it was time for her to travel home. In this case, the MAs would not pass her as having an acceptable standard of health, because there was no treatment for her condition, and her own doctors couldn't give any prediction as to how it would develop, and how quickly she would get worse (which, unfortunately, she undoubtedly would). So, having failed to get the parent/grandparent visa, the family applied for an ordinary visitor visa for the lady, and that was also refused, because INZ already knew about her dementia, and that it was unpredictable, so she COULD get stranded and unable to travel home. Ironically, if the first application had been for a visitor's visa, she would almost certainly have got it because of the lesser health requirement for that visa, but INZ couldn't "unknow" the information that they already had about her.

[junaidmaq]

Thank you very much JandM for the detailed response and sharing the details of that case. I hope that family found some other solution to be together..

Indeed our case is quite different and the way you described the criteria (because there was no treatment for her condition, and her own doctors couldn't give any prediction as to how it would develop, and how quickly she would get worse) makes it crystal clear