Recording legal residence status 106-06020050

To qualify for most Australian social security payments a customer must be an Australian resident and to make a legal claim they must also be in Australia at the time the claim is lodged, or meet an exception to the lodgement inside Australia rule.

In addition, generally a customer will need to meet either a qualifying residence period or waiting period.

Alternatively, a customer may qualify for some payments if they are the holder of a certain type of temporary visa or have a qualifying residence or waiting period exemption.

A visa qualifier code may be required where visa subclass alone cannot determine qualification, for instance, holders of visa subclass 403. This information will be available through the Immigration Datalink.

This procedure explains how to:

• verify and update a customer's legal residence status in Australia
• determine whether a qualifying residence exemption may apply, and
• record the residence information correctly

This procedure should be used as part of the new claim process if a customer advises a change in their legal residence status or a reassessment has caused a residence quarantine to be lifted.

If a datalink is established, the Department of Home Affairs advises Services Australia of certain residence and travel information for customers claiming or receiving Centrelink payments and concession cards and for their linked partners, children and care receivers. The Immigration Datalink provides detail about visas, movement information and grants of Australian citizenship, where available, from 1 September 1994 onwards.

Customers may be required to provide documentation confirming their legal residence status prior to this date.

If information has been provided directly through the Immigration Datalink, the residence information from this source will take precedence over any conflicting information provided by the customer.

Depending on the assessment, the system uses residence information on the Legal Residence (RSLEG), Country of Residence (CRES) and Immigration Advised Movements (RSIM) screens to assess whether the customer:

• meets the definition of an Australian resident
• is residing in Australia
• has a legal right to lodge a claim
• has served any waiting period or qualifying residence period, or
• has a qualifying residence exemption

Note: a non-protected Special Category visa (SCV) holder who has lived in Australia and/or Norfolk Island continuously for at least 10 years immediately before claiming may qualify for JobSeeker Payment (JSP) or Youth Allowance (YA) under the New Zealand 10 year residence exemption.

Where a current customer has their visa ended, that is, cancelled, ceased or deleted by the Department of Home Affairs:

• this update will be received automatically via the Immigration Datalink, and
• a visa end date will be recorded against that visa on the RSLEG screen

Centrelink only receive and react to visa end dates in the following situations:

• Permanent visas and visa subclass 444, where the visa is cancelled or deleted
• Temporary visas (other than visa subclass 444), where the visa is cancelled, ceased or deleted

Note: for users who have access to the Department of Home Affairs' Immigration Movement Records (MR) Database:

• the Visa Status in MR will show as C=Cancelled, S=Ceased, Z=Deleted

Centrelink do not receive or react to a status of ‘ceased’ for permanent resident visas and visa subclass 444. This is because when those visas are ceased it does not mean the customer no longer holds the visa, it just means the visa re-entry rights have expired and the customer will need to be granted another visa to re-enter Australia.

In most instances, an end date on a visa will prompt the system to reassess the customer's residence status from that end date, and update their record accordingly.

In some circumstances, the end date will not prompt a residence reassessment and the RSLEG screen will need to be manually updated with an entry of No Current Visa (NCV), in order to correctly assess the customer as a non-resident. Scenarios where this may be needed include:

• customers who still have other qualifying visas coded as current on RSLEG that are no longer in effect in MR
• customers with more than one permanent visa recorded but none of them are current
• customers whose 444 visa has ended and they have no other current visa in MR but they still have open 444 visas on their RSLEG screen

Examples are included in Resources.

If the customer's Australian permanent residence visa has been reinstated (for example, a visa cancellation is overturned on appeal) the NCV coding will need to be deleted.

Where a customer voluntarily renounces their Australian citizenship, record the new/reverted country from the date Australian citizenship was relinquished.

The legal residence details for the customer are recorded on the Legal Residence Details (RSLEG) screen. This screen is used to record country of citizenship, visa details (including visa qualifier information where applicable), and New Zealand residence status. The details on this screen relate to the customer's legal residence status and are not discretionary.

If the customer has 2 current visas at the same time, both should be recorded and the system will use the most beneficial visa for the assessment of their entitlement.

The Country of Residence (CRES) screen may also need to be coded to ensure the customer satisfies the residing in Australia requirement for an Australian payment.

The customer's legal residence status and movements from the Department of Home Affairs, along with additional information from the customer, will allow the Service Officer to determine where the customer is residing.

Child residence screens are used to view and code information about dependent children who do not have their own record. The screens are accessed by selecting the child from the parent or care giver's record.

In most cases, the name of the screen is the same with the letters CH at the beginning. The Child Legal Residence Details screen is CHRSLEG. The exception is Immigration Enquiry (RSIMME). The child version of RSIMME is CHIMME.