Family violence and migration law: protecting immigrant women's legal status

This chapter tackles the situation of immigrant women experiencing family violence. Immigration rules currently make many immigrant women dependent on their sponsors for legal status, giving women limited opportunities to maintain residency if they leave violent partners. Immigration rules also inadequately recognise rarer forms of family violence, such as forced marriage and dowry-related economic abuse. This Bill ensures that migrant partners of Australians are granted permanent residence, thus reducing their dependency, lays the foundation for creating effective visa pathways for survivors of family violence on temporary visas and clarifies the legal relevance of rarer forms of family violence.