Bringing a parent to Belgium for good: the humanitarian route
Ananda Rajashekar
Brussels · Belgium · 2 September 2026 · 5 min read
A visit visa brings a parent over for ninety days. Bringing one here to stay is a completely different application, argued on humanitarian grounds, and it is measured in years rather than months. This is what it actually took for us: four years, one refusal, one won appeal, and an approval.
Editor’s note
Ananda first wrote this as a long post for a Facebook group, because she was getting more messages about it than she could answer one by one. The Namaste Community desk edited it into the guide below. She read it and approved it before publication, and the byline is hers.
At a glance
This is not the visit visa
Worth saying plainly, because the two get muddled constantly. A short-stay type C visa is a ninety day visit and is covered in our family visit visa guide. What follows is a long-stay application on humanitarian grounds — a request to let a parent live here — and it is a far heavier, slower and more expensive thing. In our case the exact permit type was still unknown when the visa came through; that gets settled at the commune on registration.
The four year shape of it
Two and a half years passed before the first decision arrived, into a serious post-COVID backlog and an unhelpful political climate. Immigration have since said they are working to decide cases faster, and the mood has shifted, so this may well not be the shape of it today. Plan for slow; be pleased if it is not.
The decision that matters most: your grounds
Everything else is paperwork. Which dependency you argue is the case. In our case there was no financial dependency to point at, so the argument was built on emotional dependency — and, importantly, on both daughters rather than one, since both of us were genuinely central to our mother’s life. Alongside that ran a simple, concrete point: a woman in her seventies cannot realistically keep flying in for three months at a time, indefinitely.
The strongest single document
A passport showing two visits a year, for years. It proves the relationship is real and continuous, it proves she has always gone home again, and it makes the case that the visiting pattern is no longer sustainable. If you are even thinking about this route, that history is worth building now.
The documents
Largely standard, and easiest to think about in two halves.
About your parent
- Financial documents — bank statements and property details
- Pension documents
- A doctor’s letter advising against frequent travel at her age
- Passport and full visa history — the travel record
- A letter from the local municipality confirming her residence
About you, and any siblings joining the argument
- Birth certificates — these are what prove the relationship
- Salary slips and bank statements from each child making the case
- National ID for the sibling abroad (an Aadhaar card, in this case)
- Proof of enough housing space for her here
- Your passport or ID and work contract
- House registration certificate from your commune
- Civil status documents — married or single
Spouses’ documents were not needed in detail here, but that will depend on your case.
Everything from India must be apostilled
Every certificate issued in India needs an apostille from the MEA. Budget real time for it — this is the step that quietly adds weeks, and a document that arrives without it is simply not usable.
What it costs
| Item | Approximate cost |
|---|---|
| Immigration lawyer | ~€1,500 per case |
| Appeal (counted as a new case) | ~€1,500 |
| Appeal filing fee | ~€190 |
| Ombudsman, twice | ~€300 each |
| Apostilles and paperwork in India | ~₹20,000–25,000 |
| Application fee | On top of the above |
These were the figures for this family, some years ago now. Treat them as the order of magnitude to plan for, not a quote.
The ombudsman: the lever nobody mentions
At one point the immigration office simply stopped replying to the lawyer’s emails, and there was nothing obvious to do about it. The answer was the federal ombudsman. The authorities are obliged to respond to the ombudsman, so bringing them in restarted a conversation that had gone silent. It was used twice.
If your file has gone quiet for months and the usual channels are producing nothing, this is the door to knock on.
If you are refused
A refusal is not the end of it. This one came back after two and a half years with reasoning the family found thin — and the appeal was won, with the judge notably sympathetic. The practical consequence is that a fresh application then went in, so budget for the possibility of paying for the case twice.
On lawyers
I did the whole thing with an immigration lawyer, and I rate that as decisive: they chased the file, they handled every exchange with the immigration office, and they knew how to structure the narrative. My first lawyer was not a good fit and I changed; the second, Amira Sadek, I recommend warmly — empathetic, realistic, and she knows her job. Lawyers cost real money, as the table above shows.
What I would tell you
- Do the groundwork before you file. Choosing the right grounds is the single biggest decision in the whole process.
- Be extremely careful how the case is presented. Applications get refused on small and unclear grounds, and a weak narrative is what gets picked at.
- Belgian citizenship helps on the sponsoring side, and so does clear financial independence.
- Build the travel history early — regular visits, always returning home, are evidence you cannot manufacture later.
- Patience and persistence. Four years, a refusal and an appeal, and it still ended in an approval.
How this came to be here
I wrote this first as a post in a Facebook group, to stop answering the same questions one message at a time. The Namaste Community desk edited it into this guide and I approved it before it went up. Every family’s case is different and the rules change, so please take anything that matters to a professional — and if you have been through this yourself, write it up and put your own name on it.
One person’s account, not official advice
Ananda wrote this from their own experience. Rules change and offices differ — check anything that matters with the people who decide it.
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