Abstract
Australian citizens or permanent residents can sponsor a spouse or prospective spouse for immigration, and concerns have been raised particularly in regards to serial or repeat sponsorship and the rights to safety for sponsored partners who are victims of domestic violence. There has been little research to date though on this type of family migration. By bringing together immigration statistics and policies from current national and international literature, this paper provides a more nuanced portrayal of patterns of spouse sponsorship and the potential problems of serial sponsorship and protection of those sponsored from intimate partner violence (IPV). We identify the limitation of the existing immigration policy and law for protecting the right of sponsored spouses who are mainly women. Some recommendations to better support these sponsored people are also explored.
Highlights
Immigrants form a significant part of Australian society and have contributed to the country’s development
There has been limited literature and data highlighting the issue of serial sponsorship of spouses by Australian partners; the fact that almost three quarters of serial sponsors had a history of family violence is very disturbing (Schloenhardt 2009)
Despite regulation 1.20J of the Migration Regulation Act (Cth) (1994) discussed below that dictates a five-year interval between sponsorship, a more recent study using data provided by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection confirms that between 1 July 2005 and 30 June 2011, there were a total of 288 repeat sponsors in Australia (Lyneham and Richards 2014)
Summary
Immigrants form a significant part of Australian society and have contributed to the country’s development. In line with some international studies, current literature in the Australian context underline the vulnerability of sponsored spouses, in particular overseas-born women, to domestic violence and the role of discriminative immigration laws vis-a-vis this vulnerability There has been limited literature and data highlighting the issue of serial sponsorship of spouses by Australian partners; the fact that almost three quarters of serial sponsors had a history of family violence is very disturbing (Schloenhardt 2009). Attention to the issue of spouse serial sponsorship in Australia arose from research on Filipino migrant women and their experience of domestic violence. It is important to understand these in order to identify gaps in the law and to provide recommendations for the better protection of sponsored spouses
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