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Hi adackakes
Welcome to Poms in Oz.
Slow right down, honey.
There is nothing quick about DIY Migration to Australia, of that I can absolutely assure you.
I am a fully-qualified solicitor with stacks of experience but none of it in Immigration Law anywhere. Word reached my ear 2.5 years ago that my mother might be eligible for a visa known as a Contributory Parent visa. Now - this is one of the easiest of all possible visas - a hundred times easier than a skilled visa because there is no skills test involved.
Nevertheless, I am not qualified - or even trained in - Australian Law, and I also had no idea what DIAC were talking about because I had never come across "visa-jargon" before. I was also 100% goddamned CERTAIN that I would probably get the whole thing disastrously wrong unless I did all the research more thoroughly than anyone has ever done it before.
The upshot was that it was four months before I felt sufficiently on top of the whole thing to be willing to send the application to Australia and to risk something like £750 of Mum's money in doing so.
I didn't know it at the time but Go Matilda, one of the best firms of migration agents in the UK, are only 5 miles down the road from me in Southampton. With their help and guidance, the application would have been ready to go within four weeks. On my own, it was four months before I was satisfied that it was accurate, ready to go and that I had not overlooked anything important.
So what makes you believe that you stand a chance of sorting the whole thing out within a couple of weeks when the applications you are proposing to tackle are a bloody sight more intricate and complex than they are for a Contributory Parent?
I absolutely, completely understand that you do reach points where you think, "Jeezuz! What IS this utterly unintelligible RUBBISH???? It is such incomprehensible gibberish that the only possible deduction is that they must have given a biro to a kangaroo and just hoped for the blinking best with it!!!"
LITERALLY. Other people reading this might laugh, but it really IS how I felt at times. When you get to that point, it is time to switch the machine off and walk away. After a couple of hours, you get to the point where your brain has absorbed as much new information as it can for one day. There is no point in trying to slog on because at that stage, your brain simply won't absorb any more so there is no mileage in beating it up.
Cut this up into bite sized chunks and do not try to eat more than one chunk a day. You have established that you think Stacey meets the criteria for Electrician (Special Class.) Well - maybe so, maybe not, but you have got that far and it looks OK to me too from your description of his job. That is a BIG success and it is enough for one day.
The next step is to check whether or not your theory about the skills-identification is accurate. Check, double check and triple check before you believe a word of any of it is my advice.
Alternatively, invest £1,500 or so on Go Matilda's professional fees and leave the headaches with them. Leave them to do the soldiering for you and Instruct them to tell you which box to sign. If you use a top notch agent, this is what it boils down to.
Think about it, lass, because I am not convinced that it is worth driving yourself to distraction for the sake of a few hundred quid. Given that the Big Move is likely to cost around £20,000, the Agents' fees are not that bad, I suggest.
Cheers
Gill
Last edited by Gollywobbler; 20-01-2008 at 10:31 PM.
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Mrs Keily is right guys. We went with an agent
Jo, Jerry, Bradley n Max (dog)
