[Life] In 1996, my parents settled in Sydney.

Author: JEFFI CHAO HUI WU

Time: 2025-7-14 Monday, 9:14 AM

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[Life] In 1996, my parents settled in Sydney.

It was a long and torturous process, and it remains a memory that still stirs my blood to this day. In September 1996, I finally succeeded in applying for my parents to settle in Sydney, marking one of the most important moments of my life. Many people only see the warm scene of our reunion, unaware that prior to this, I had spent an entire year working hard to apply for my parents to settle in Australia, enduring an extreme test of immigration policies, procedural processes, and the realities of life all at once.

In 1995, I had just settled in Sydney, my career was in its early stages, and the pace of life was hectic, as I had to balance both technical and business responsibilities at the company every day. However, I always worried about my parents back in China. Developing overseas on my own, I hoped that one day I could bring them to Australia to enjoy their later years and share family time together. Thus, I officially initiated the plan to apply for permanent residency in Australia for my parents.

The immigration policy in Australia during that era had just gone through a period of relaxation. As a new immigrant who remained in the country on a student visa, I had the opportunity in the mid-1990s to submit a "Parent Migration" application for my immediate family members. The policy had not yet tightened; although the procedures were cumbersome, it was not like later when one would have to wait for over a decade. In other words, I was fortunate to catch the window period before the policy changed. At that time, international students had not yet obtained their permanent residency status, let alone apply for their parents to settle here.

However, even so, the process is still very difficult. The first step is to prepare all the basic materials and proof of relationships. I translated and notarized my parents' birth certificates, marriage certificate, my birth notarization, household registration documents, various identification proofs from China, and the sponsorship documents from Australia, and I also had to create a bilingual version in accordance with the requirements, which needed to be certified by a JP and signed and stamped by a notary office in Australia. I spent nearly a month on this round of preparation, and each form had to be filled out in accordance with the latest guidelines from the immigration bureau; any minor error or omission could lead to rejection or delays.

The parents also began to prepare simultaneously. They needed to go to the designated hospital in China to complete a physical examination and obtain a health report. The mother's examination went smoothly, but the father was required to provide further medical reports and detailed information due to a slight deviation in one of the indicators at that time. I suddenly fell into a state of anxiety. At that time, there was no internet communication, and a medical report from the country often took several weeks to be mailed. The Australian immigration office also required that the documents be completed within a limited time, otherwise the application would be invalidated.

I was as anxious as an ant on a hot stove. During that time, every afternoon after work, I rushed between various immigration agents and law firms in Sydney, carrying a heavy folder of documents, consulting, seeking advice, and verifying information everywhere. Sometimes, in one day, I had to meet three different immigration consultants, repeatedly photocopying, translating, filing, and categorizing all of my father's reports, and then submitting them to the lawyer for review to see if they met the supplementary standards. While I was handling the paperwork, I also had to maintain the daily operations of the company. I left home at seven in the morning and didn’t drag my exhausted body out of the office until midnight, grabbing a quick bite at a corner restaurant just to fill my stomach.

One evening, I sat on a bench downstairs in the office, flipping through a stack of application forms, feeling nearly overwhelmed. At that moment, I wondered, what am I really doing this for? But thinking of my parents back home who were waiting day and night, and considering that they were already retired, the feelings of longing and responsibility suddenly overshadowed all my fatigue, and I continued to organize the materials.

After several months, I have accumulated a large stack of materials, with all the forms, notarized documents, medical examination reports, letters, and lawyer's letters piled up to a height of fifty centimeters. I still keep these materials in a box, taking them with me every time I move, because they are not just an application file, but an irreplaceable record of my struggles in life.

Finally, on a spring morning in 1996, I received a call from my mother in China. She excitedly told me, "The Australian Immigration Department has written to us! We have been approved to settle in Australia!" I held the phone in silence for a long time, my mind blank, feeling that all the efforts had not been in vain.

In September of that year, I stood in the arrival hall of Sydney International Airport, watching my parents walk out of customs with their luggage. In that moment, I was almost moved to tears. They had finally arrived, crossing mountains and seas, overcoming systems, and could finally live securely in this southern hemisphere where I had been striving. That year, they might have been among the first parents to successfully settle in Australia through student sponsorship. Not long after that, the Australian government tightened its policies, and the waiting period for my parents' immigration stretched to nearly ten years, with the application difficulty increasing sharply. For those who came later, even with similar conditions, it became nearly impossible to replicate the path of those earlier years.

To this day, I still remember in my mind: preparing the complete set of notarizations, translations, medical examinations, reviews, and supplementary documents, then bustling around Sydney for months, juggling work and the hustle... Who could know what a life chase it was, exhausting all my efforts.

I often tell myself deep down: In 1996, we completed this long march of immigration against the wind together.

Source: https://www.australianwinner.com/AuWinner/viewtopic.php?t=696858