path2aus

I am still confused about the Police checks. Can I do it after the application has been submitted? Please let me know.

Thanks for clearing that up.

Congratulations on the visa grant. Best of luck with your move. Where are you headed to?

4 years with upto one year absence from the country. Which means I have completed 3 full years with entry date as 2012. One and 3 combination comes to just 3 years.

Yes the residence calculator says that we are eligible to apply for citizenship.

We got our PR in 2012 and visited Australia in the same year to validate our visa. We then went back to US and stayed there for 4 years before returning back in 2017. We are now eligible to apply for citizenship. We understand that we need to apply for FBI clearance (USA) and Police Clearance from our country of birth but just wanted to understand the timing of the same. Does it have to be submitted along with the application or will it be requested later? I called the helpline and they said not request and only do it when requested. The FBI clearance takes 4-8 weeks to get done and the process is elaborate. I would like to submit the application and apply for the clearances in parallel. Is that possible? Any help will be appreciated.

I second this. Contact a migration agent ASAP as they would be able to give you a quicker and better solution to handle this situation.

I am really sorry about what you and your kids are going through. The Child Visa even though shows 12 month processing time. mostly gets granted soon. My daughters visa 3 years ago was granted in 2 months. If you decided to bring your kids on tourist visa you I think will be entitled to the reciprocal medicare? (I think) but not sure about the schools. The best thing is to apply for the child visa as soon as you can.

Okay..It is not the expense. It is just the effort involved and the time. Anyways thanks. I will work on getting a current one.

Hello All, We would be eligible to apply for citizenship in couple of months and I have a question regarding the PCC's required. I got my PR in 2012 but did not move to Australia completely till 2017. So I would need to give PCC's for USA where I lived before I moved here. My question is I have FBI clearance certificate provided in 2016 December, right before I moved to Australia in January of 2017. Will that work? Or do I need to provide a new one? I have never visited USA after November of 2016 when the PCC was obtained. Anyone with experience please let us know. Thanks

As Marisa said, vacations and port of entry does not matter. I arrived in Melbourne as well while my sponsoring state was South Australia.

I think you need to contact a good migration agent. There are few good ones who post here regularly please get in touch with them before you proceed. @Raul Senise @paulhand

Both Raul and Russell who have responded above are reputed RMA's. Like they say, talking about 491 at the moment is too early as there isn't much information available at the moment on the same.

Thanks very much Paul.

You would need to get a temp accommodation like the airbnb etc. Most of the people coming to Australia on a Permanent visa or a regional visa come here without a job, so you should be fine. I am not sure about NT but you not having job should not stop your kid from being admitted in a school. I have never heard of job being a blocker for kids to be able to go to school. If that was the case most kids of migrants will be missing school years. You need to arrange for an accommodation before landing here and then contact the local realtors for properties (This can be done from overseas as well like I did). In Australia you need to inspect the home before you can fill out the application. So no way getting around that.

This post really helped us. Our situation is same as the OP. We got our PR's on 1 Feb 2012. Travelled to Australia for a holiday on 1st September 2012 for a week. Moved permanently in January of 2017 before our 5 year travel facility expired. Now have been living here for almost 3 years straight. Was thinking that I will have to wait till 2021 :). Now will apply in 2020. The only question I have though is I got my RRV earlier this year but have never left Australia over the last 3 years. Will this matter? I will be leaving the country for a month this December for a vacation and will be back in January. I am planning to apply for the Citizenship around March or April of 2020.Is that timeline okay?

We had to fill out Form 80 as well. MA will find it difficult to fill out that form and the only way they can do it is to collect all the information they need for the form from you. Which means that you will be filling MA's version of the form which will anyways require all the information needed for Form80. Considering that it will be better for us to just fill out that form ourselves to avoid multiple back and forth between the MA and us.

I will check with your MA and take their advise. But again if they don't know what to do then you are in trouble. You might have to take second opinion or change your representation. It is too risky to be relying on a forum where people who may have never gone through the issue you are facing right now.

In this situation as JetBlast suggests, it is better to contact a good migration agent for consult. The skills assessment might be tricky and might need some help.

It will be from the time you get it. Since you fulfil the requirement of 2 years in the last 5 years, it should be fairly quick.

If you are already here, you can probably show that you are working with the pay slips etc...I don't think the funds is valid for people who are already here in Australia. I may be wrong but someone else can clarify. Do you ask for proof? Like Lavers said above, I had applied for SA as well and was not asked for any proof of funds.

I would recommend you to contact someone like @Raul Senise who has posted on this thread. With limited options, you need professional advice to assess and determine possibilities.

That is wrong. People with passports of certain countries don't need to take the English test unless it is needed by the assessing authority or for claiming points for immigration.

You can try and apply for an RRV but again you must either show strong ties to Australia or compelling reasons for not being able to move within the stipulated time. But again you might have a chance of getting a 3 month RRV or something like that if you apply. They may not grant you one as well. You will not know unless you apply.

There are a few good ones that post here. You can contact any of them @Alan Collett @Raul Senise @wrussell.