Incoming Passenger Card or Arrival to Australia.
Most of the Australian Incoming Passenger Card is quite simple to complete, but the ‘reason for your entry into Australia’ is sometimes a bit difficult, for some visa holders.
You have three options
- A – Migrating permanently to Australia
- B – Visitor or temporary entrant
- C – Resident returning to Australia
A PR visa holder coming to Australia for the first time, would correctly tick “A”.
A Visitor Visa or Student Visa holder would correctly tick “B”.
A Citizen or a PR visa holder, coming back to Australia, would correctly tick “C”.
820 Temporary visa
Most Immigration staff at the airport have stated that a subclass 820 temporary visa holder is classed as PR, so they would tick “C Resident returning to Australia”
300 or 309 Temporary Visa
Someone on a subclass 300 or 309 visa, which is a Temporary Visa, might be confused.
Are they: “A”, migrating permanently, which is actually their intention, or is it “B”, a temporary entrant, as they have a Temporary visa.
My personal view is that selecting “A – Migrating permanently to Australia” would be right for a 300 or 309 visa holder, as they are migrating permanently to Australia, unless Immigration refuse a visa later.
An 820 visa holder, who is entitled to various benefits that a PR gets in Australia, and who is often classed as Tax Resident in Australia, and is physically resident in Australia, could in many ways quite correctly tick “C – Resident returning to Australia”.
This is an image of the “Reason for your entry into Australia” part.
We did “B – Visitor or temporary entrant” on first arrival on a 12 months visitor visa, while the subclass 300 visa was processing.
After 6 months of residing in Australia, albeit on a visitor visa, we did: “A – Migrating permanently to Australia”, when coming back into Australia on the subclass 300 visa, after a 7 day holiday trip outside Australia.
2 years later, we did: “C – Resident returning to Australia”, after returning from a holiday while on the 820 visa, but before getting PR.
Full example of Incoming Passenger Card at abf.gov.au/…/ipc-sample-english.pdf