Love is fuelling Australia's family migration boom.

Almost 30,000 people who were married or engaged to Australians settled here last year, says an Immigration Department report.

This was 80 per cent of the total family migrant intake.

A further 10,000 permanent visas were granted to applicants already living here with their partners.

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,24562041-911,00.html

Harr! Thanks very much for this, Alan.

So - 10,000 upgrades from the Temp to the PR spouse visa. That feels like 100,000 to prospective PV or CPV applicants desperately waiting for their child's upgrade to crawl its way up the ladder to a PR visa grant.

Meanwhile these Parents get clobbered by the next price-hike in fees whilst the Parents of migrants who had PR on Day One skip in fast because their child has become "settled" in Oz relatively quickly.

Query: Why does it take a child who is married to an Aussie and therefore has the support of his/her Aussie family available locally longer to become "settled" than the child who knew absolutely nobody in Oz on the day when s/he arrived?

Sure, we can talk about the technicalities of PR as well as "settled." But add infamous delay in processing the upgrade and the net result is that Child A's Parents get their CPV a good couple of years before Child B's Parents get theirs and it is much worse for the Parent relying on a PV103.

Which is not right in my view and something should be done to level this part of the playing field.

Parents, on the other hand, are surprisingly nimble about getting out to Oz once the poor souls eventually get their visas. Good for them!

Cheers

Gill