Tip Series: Is the Department required to backdate the time of grant of a BVA to the time of the respective substantive visa application? No. As a result, a last minute BVA application might result in clients being unlawful for hours and even days.
Although it is true that BVAs are, in most cases, granted almost immediately after a substantive visa application and without human intervention, that is not to say that BVAs are (or must be) always granted almost immediately after lodgement, let alone that the Department is required to backdate the time of grant to the time of the substantive visa application.
First of all, the writer is not aware of any legislative provisions to the effect that a visa must be processed within a certain period of time. A BVA, like any other visa, will be processed when the Department decides to process it, perhaps except for extreme cases where courts can intervene, ordering that a visa be processed by a given point in time.
Although it reduces costs to have IT systems in place that can process BVA applications almost immediately after the lodgement of a substantive visa application, some BVA applications can take hours or even days to process.
But does the time of grant of the BVA matter? Yes, it does. For instance, clients who are onshore and apply for a BVA (through a substantive visa application) just before their current visa expires might become unlawful between the expiry of their current visa and the grant of the BVA, for the following reasons ...