Visa status

In the 2021-22 PSS, information about visa status was obtained from men and women aged 18 years and over, who were born overseas and had arrived in Australia in the 10 years prior to the survey.

People who had arrived in the 12 months prior to the survey and were not intending to stay for more than 12 months were out of scope for the PSS.

This topic refers to the current visa type and residency status of the respondent and whether the respondent was the main applicant for their visa.

A visa is permission or authority granted to foreign nationals by the Australian Government to travel to, enter and/or remain in Australia for a defined period of time or indefinitely.

The 'main applicant' is the person whose skills or proposed activities in Australia are assessed as part of their visa application. The visa is granted to the main applicant, and any secondary applicant(s) (i.e. spouse or dependents). The respondent for this survey may not have been the main applicant for the visa.

Current residency status refers to whether the Australian Government has granted permission or authority to the person to live in Australia permanently or temporarily. For those granted temporary status, they are allowed to either stay for a specified period, stay until a specific event happens, or stay while they have a specified status.

Current visa type refers to the type of visa applied for e.g. student, skilled, humanitarian, or family. This provides information on the visa criteria which the main applicant needs to have met.

Respondents were first asked whether they were an Australian or New Zealand citizen.  If they were, no further questions were asked for this topic.

Non-Australian/New Zealand citizens were asked to identify if they were the main applicant for the visa followed by the 3-digit subclass number code or name of the visa. The name/code was able to be selected from a trigram coder. For respondents who knew the code/name of their visa, no further questions were asked. If they were unable to find the name/code in the trigram or did not know it, they could select ‘not listed’/’Visa number or name not known’. See Data Processing and Coding chapter for more details on use of trigram coders.

Where a respondent did not know the specific name of the visa they held or the visa type was not listed, additional questions were asked to assist with determining the type of visa. These questions included:

• the residency status of the current visa
• the type of current visa
• whether a points test was met by the main applicant
• whether the main applicant was sponsored.

As soon as sufficient information had been collected to determine the type of visa, no further questions were asked.

The data items and related output categories for this topic are contained within the SPS Level – Demographics tab in the data item list available under Downloads.

Data for this topic was collected to examine recent migrants’ experiences of violence.

Data items from this topic should not be used on their own to produce general population estimates of visa holders. For more detailed information on visa holders and their characteristics see Permanent migrants in Australia, and Temporary visa holders in Australia.

Points to be considered when using and interpreting data from this topic include the following:

• The population focus for this topic is on persons who arrived in Australia in the 10 years prior to the survey. It excludes persons who arrived in the 12 months prior to the survey and were not planning to stay for more than 12 months.
• As the survey was conducted throughout 2021 and 2022, the start of the 10-year period prior to the survey may be either 2011 or 2012.
• Of persons in the approached sample who were not born in Australia and arrived in the 10 years prior to the survey, 77.8% were fully responding.

Visa status information was not collected prior to 2021-22.