Pombrom

G’day All, I thought I would share my 186 visa timeline as this site has been very helpful to me so I wanted to share with others incase it helps you ! We are a married couple from the north of England and I had been working in Australia on a 457 for 2 years when my employer agreed to sponsor me for PR and 186 Temporary Residence Stream my main reason for the request was so that I could buy a house and feel more settled here as we absolutely love it here ( Melbourne) We actually arrived in Australia on a student visa in Jan 2010 and my husband retrained with a trade which was the only way in that we could see at the time (and very quick but expensive way) after attending various Moving to Oz seminars in the UK. I was lucky to work part time for a sister company to my UK employer until they sponsored me later that year! The 186 is pretty new visa but I did my research and decided that we would apply without an agent as could not see how they would help that much as you would still need to complete the forms and provide the documents etc. I think they are only necessary if you have a complex situation and need advice or if you want a visa in a rush (although “decision ready” are not always quicker from what I have read ) My employer submitted their nomination early Dec 12 and we proceeded to apply for police checks from UK and Aus immediately but decided not to do medicals or put our application in until this was approved . On 6/6/13 the nomination was approved and I was little annoyed with ourselves for not applying in December at the same time as then I assume both nomination and approval would have been approved together. Thanks to Poms in Oz I saw a post that visa prices were about to increase significantly on 1/7/13 so we set this as our deadline to get our application done and luckily we did it a few days earlier as the immigration web site ended up down for maintenance for the last few days of the deadline which was bad timing ! We had to ring the immigration line to clarify a few grey areas and also had some issues uploading documents and with the browser in general to do our application ( firefox on a windows pc was our solution in the end ) I added the main “required” documents immediately but you are not 100% what else might be needed until you apply so I then added some of the “recommended” documents over the next month as I located them. We did not do a form 80 in the end which was the form that scared me the most (just due to the level of detail required especially as we had travelled so much in recent years) and in the end was never asked for this ! I was expecting another 6mth wait for the application and was shocked to get a call mid-September from a case officer saying she was processing our application and just needed the medicals asap rest was all fine. We booked our medicals (there is a new HAP system via the online application link to arrange medicals so no need for forms 160 and 26 which is not clear) and rang her to tell her when they were done. 1 week later (yesterday) 8/10/13 we received our 186 Grant letter which we are so happy about !! We are now 2 very very happy Poms in Oz !!!!! Next stop citizenship and not even started to look into how long until that one we just cross one bridge at a time ! Good luck everyone and hope this post helps you in some way ! Summary Nomination 6/12/12 – approved 6/6/13 exactly 6 mths Application 26/6/13 – approved 8/10/13 – just over 3 mths !

Thanks for the alert on the charges which I had no idea about and which pushed me to get my application done this week as my nomination for 186 was approved 2 weeks ago and we were slowly getting our paperwork organised for our application ! Saving $1500 got us moving ! Beware though as their systems are down from tomorrow 28th for the whole weekend due to the new fees being implemented so if anyone is leaving until this weekend do it NOW !!! We are doing it all ourselves, no agent so fingers crossed and looks like fees change every year so beware for next July folks too !