At present, it costs $7,715 to bring a partner to Australia whether an application is lodged locally or overseas.
This however, only accounts for the upfront fee an applicant pays to bring a partner Down Under - and “unfortunately” is a calculation many Indian migrants looking for partners have started to make.
Melbourne-based Harmanjit Singh who runs a ‘free’ matrimonial page on Facebook says that more and more Indian migrants based in Australia prefer to marry “locals only.”
The 28-year-old claims that the trend is largely fueled by the “overwhelming immigration costs” involved in bringing a partner to Australia, besides the cultural context.
“If you marry someone who lives in India, you’d have to shell out an extra $10,000 just to bring her here. But if you marry someone who is already permanent here, you can probably use that money to make down payment for a house.
“And then let’s not forget, that for someone who is already here, it would be easier to adjust here, because he or she would already be accustomed to the lifestyle in Australia, which is very different from the way we live in India,” says Mr Singh.
But Jujhar Bajwa, a migration agent based in Melbourne says it is an ideal situation only in cases where both partners are permanent residents.
“For all the others, they will have to apply for a spousal visa even if one partner is permanent.
“The only catch where one partner is on a permanent visa and the other one is a student or on any other temporary visa, is that they would not have to wait for a year to be united post their marriage, as both would be onshore,” says Mr Bajwa.
But while the likes of Harman are busy scouting for suitable partners locally, Sheeba* a business professional based in Ludhiana says an “Indian-origin man settled in Australia” would be her ideal match.
“I can fund my own immigration fee, as long as my husband is someone who is based anywhere in Australia,” says the 27-year-old who has registered her profile with two of the oldest matrimonial websites in India.
“I’m also aware that once I’m married, it can take a little over a year for me to make it to Australia, but I’m sure the wait would be worth it,” she added.
Saichithra Swaminathan, the chief portal and mobile officer of Matrimony.com said that as is for Sheeba*, Australia is indeed one of the top four preferred destinations for their registered users.
20,000 users have registered for our services in Australia out of which 31% are women and 69% are men.
“Most of them are north Indians, while we also have a considerable proportion of people of Telugu, Tamil and Malayali backgrounds who are registered with us,” said Ms Swaminathan.
She added that partner choices are largely governed by two factors-“how closely the credentials match between the prospective bride and the groom and secondly, the geographic location of the overseas partner.”
“The location is important because in some sense, it is going to define the future opportunities available for the person who will be relocating from India and Australia is definitely amongst the top four preferred destinations, based on the data we have collected,” she added.
'Passport matters more than the person'
For Australian citizen, Mamata Singh who has been looking for an Indian-origin groom for her only daughter says “frenzy around settling in Australia” is the exact factor that worries her the most.
“As far as options are concerned, I think we’re literally spoilt for choice. But the issue is that most of the boys on these websites want to get married to an Australian citizen for the sake of getting an easy pathway into this country.
“So each time, we believe we have met an ideal guy for our daughter, it turns out the passport matters more than the person itself, which is quite disappointing for us and heartbreaking for our daughter,” said Ms Singh.
When we took Ms Singh’s concerns to Ms Swaminathan, she said Matrimony.com is extremely focused on checking fraudsters from registering for their services.
“We have internal mechanisms to identify fraudsters and to ensure safety, particularly for our female clients. We have introduced trust badges for users who have attached verified documents to their profiles.
“For NRI clients we’ve introduced location verification which takes the profile location, matches it with the GPS coordinates to ensure that the profile belongs to the person claiming to be an NRI, which adds more authenticity to the profile,” she added.
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