But in practice, approval can take a long time, because of annual limits on visas granted.Faced with this delay, many partners and children come to Australia on visitor visas and then apply for family visas, at which point they are transferred to bridging visas and can work and access Medicare in Australia until their permanent visa is granted.Several sources said Mr Burke planned to impose new conditions preventing this, which would reduce net migration by requiring spouses and children to remain overseas until they were approved.Last week, Mr Burke also moved to deprioritise those who applied for family visas from offshore, which in combination could see partners and children face even longer waits away from their families.The latest departmental figures show there are nearly 400,000 people on bridging visas, a record figure which is more than double the levels seen before the pandemic "Be careful you don't trigger adverse behaviours."Mr Van Vliet said the government did "have a problem with so many people on bridging visas who've applied for humanitarian visas and been knocked back", but that changes were needed to protect "genuine applicants" whose asylum claims were well-founded.Mr Rizvi said he was broadly supportive of the government's aspiration to achieve a set level of net migration, and that a figure broadly in the range of 200,000 to 250,000 was appropriate."I think the approach to managing net overseas migration should be similar to the way the Reserve Bank manages inflation, where you have a long-term target range and you try to get as close to that range as often as possible," he said."At the moment there isn't a plan … The minister needs to explain to the Australian public a long-term plan that makes sense