Subclass 020 Bridging B visa

A bridging visa can be granted long before it takes effect. A visa has effect as soon as it is granted unless it provides that it comes into effect on a later day or event [s 68(1)] [s 68(2)], and a bridging visa granted to a person who still holds a substantive visa typically sits dormant until that substantive visa ceases. It is never backdated to the lodgement of the underlying application, so a gap can open between lodging and the bridging visa taking effect.

Work rights, travel, and conditions follow the visa that is actually in effect, not the one merely granted. While a visitor, student, or other substantive visa remains in effect, its conditions control, and the dormant bridging visa's work rights do not activate. The validity of the underlying substantive application is a separate question from the bridging visa's date of effect: a valid application does not bring the date of effect forward.

A Bridging B is the travel-and-return bridging visa. The applicant must already hold a Bridging A or B [cl 020.211], must have an undecided substantive application (or equivalent linked process), and must satisfy the Minister that the reasons for wishing to leave and re-enter are substantial [cl 020.212]; the return must also not be contrary to the public interest [cl 020.213]. It is not a fallback for a person who cannot meet the Bridging A criteria and not a work-rights device.

The main risk is timing. Do not travel until the Bridging B is granted and its travel period has been checked. If the holder is outside Australia when the travel period passes, the whole bridging visa ceases, not merely the travel facility, and it cannot be revived from offshore [cl 020.511(1)(c)] [s 82(5)]; the recovery is another visa to enter Australia.

Work rights follow the condition clause of the visa actually in effect. Under the special pathways in cl 010.611(1) to (3E), the Bridging A carries no conditions or specified conditions, but the residual case in cl 010.611(4) carries over the applicable conditions from the visa held at the time of application [cl 010.611]. A Bridging A on the no-work condition 8101 is not varied to permit work; the holder applies for a further Bridging A on a compelling need to work basis, which regulation 1.08 defines exhaustively as financial hardship [reg 1.08(a)] or a narrow Class UC / Subclass 457 nomination limb [reg 1.08(d)] [cl 010.211(4)]. That nomination limb was never extended to Subclass 482, so an approved 482 nomination does not establish the need – the practical route is financial hardship, and the travel-focused Bridging B's grant criteria contain no compelling-need limb at all [cl 020.211]-[cl 020.213].