Where will you have your baby? Australia or Philippines?

I've posted on this topic before, where I've advised passionate couples to try to delay the baby-making until you are both well and truly settled. Passions seem to be winning on this one, and I guess that’s nature’s way. Aussie men are also the finest and most desirable men in the world, as we all know! And Filipinas are the loveliest ladies in the world too. So what else is going to happen??

So your Filipina lady is pregnant? Let Down Under Visa give you romantic couples a few practical things to think about if you want to have your baby in Australia:

Medicare coverage or private medical insurance coverage

If you have already applied for a partner visa, you can apply for Medicare. If you have NOT applied for a partner visa, ie. if she is in Australia on a tourist visa or if you have a Prospective Marriage Visa, you may not.

And private health insurance will never cover pre-existing conditions.

No coverage means it will cost you around AUD$15,000.00 to have a baby in Australia. Check with your doctor to get a more accurate figure, but you’ll find it won’t be too much less.

If mum is on a tourist visa

If mum-to-be is on a Subclass 309 Partner Visa, then you have no problems. If she’s on a Subclass 300 Prospective Marriage Visa, you will just have the cost issue. Tourist visas are the main problem.

Subclass 600 Tourist visas are temporary visas. They have an expiry date. Overstay, and she faces possible detention and/or deportation. Yes, if you are on the ball you can manage to avoid these things happening, but an expectant mum doesn't need this sort of pressure on her at this time. The clock is ticking constantly, and each day the visa expiry date draws nearer.

Invariably mum will become medically unfit to fly. Each airline has their own rules, and they will want a medical certificate stating that she may fly. If she may not fly, this certificate may be used to either support an application for another tourist visa, or to help you apply for a waiver of the Condition 8503 No Further Stay (which may be imposed on the tourist visa). Again, more pressure and more stress that neither of you need at that time.

Anyway, she gives birth. You pay up big. You've already sorted out 8503 waivers and/or further tourist visa applications. You have your baby there, and mum and baby get stronger. You then have another expiry date coming up where mum is going to need to leave the country. What else is there to worry about?

Baby needs a passport!

Baby in most cases will travel back to the Philippines with mum. This is either to wait for the granting of the partner visa or prospective marriage visa that you fortunately managed to lodge before you left, or back to start the permanent visa process right from the beginning if you weren't so well-organised.

That means you need to organise baby’s birth certificate and someone in an important position to state that baby is who you say baby is, and you can then apply for the passport. You will then wait for the passport and hope that it arrives before mum’s visa expires. If you can’t organise it in time, then mum will go back and leave baby there with you (which can be really good fun).

If baby goes to Philippines on new Aussie passport, then baby can stay for 30 days. If it will take longer, mum needs to battle the crowds at the Bureau of Immigration in Intramuros (Manila) to organise Philippines Citizenship for baby to avoid overstaying problems.

She may then need to spend all day at the CFO getting lectured about what to do if her Aussie husband beats her up. If she has the baby with her, that won't be much fun either.

In many ways it’s a whole lot easier to give birth in the Philippines, and to add baby onto the existing partner visa application. This will either mean that you will need to be in Philippines when she gives birth and then to have to go back and leave both of them, or you will need to have your lady give birth in Philippines while you are back in Australia.

But it should cost you a whole lot less than $15,000.00 to pay the doctors in the Philippines, even in a really good hospital. And she will have relatives around to help her. No one has babies in the Philippines without plenty of family support, which is something you need to remember and be aware of.

Plus, when she craves weird things like green mango with bagoong, it will be much easier to find these things in Manila than in Melbourne!

Of course you could always try to delay parenthood until you’re both stable. Just saying…….