Reading through the threads, we thought some of you might be interested in our experiences. We have now been in Australia as permanent residents with a 143 visa for a little over 2 years. We initially used a migration agent based in Perth, having met their representative in London the previous year. We sent the forms to them in January 2013 but they took what seemed to us to be an excessive amount of time checking our forms. Finally after many prompts by us, they said the forms had now all been changed by Immigration and would have to be re-done. However they offered to do this for us on our behalf, and just use the signature page we had submitted. They then told us the forms had been sent to the Parent Visa Section in July 2013.
Meanwhile we put the house on the market. In December 2013, we had a concrete offer which we accepted. You can imagine how we felt when we learnt only a few days later on the internet that the Migration Agent we had used had gone bankrupt. We immediately sent off an email and got a reply from the liquidators confirming the bankruptcy and furthermore stating there was no record of our application ever having been lodged. What a Christmas present! We phoned Immigration in London and they were also unable to find any application and stated we would have to start over again!
We decided not to lose the sale of the house, so moved into rented accommodation in January 2014. We completed all the new forms, and sent them by courier. No Agent this time, in January 2014. We didn’t want to stay in the UK rental for another 2 years while the new application went through so we applied for and got a 600 Visa allowing us to visit Australia for a maximum of 12 months in any 18, for a period of 3 years. We also took a very big gamble and applied for permission (as foreigners) to buy a house in Australia. We were told it had to be new or off plan, we could not buy anything ‘second hand’. We paid the deposit on an off-plan house which was going to be ready about November 2014. Unfortunately we could not ship any furniture, on a 600 Visa, so everything went into storage in the UK.
We travelled to Australia on the 600 visa in October 2014 with a view to having to ‘come and go’ until the 143 was granted. With a 600 for 3 years, we had a fair amount of leeway. We moved into the house at the beginning of November 2014. Incidentally, we sent 3 large suitcases by ship containing clothes, shoes, sports items but they took 3 months to arrive so if you are reading this, we suggest you use air freight as it is quicker.
About a month later, at the suggestion of the family in Australia, we phoned up Immigration to see if they could give us an update on the new application we had sent in January 2014. Imagine our horror again when we were told they had no record of an application from us Somewhat distraught at this, we contacted the family and our son, our sponsor, he told us he had just the very same day received an email from Immigration asking him to make the sponsorship payment etc for our application which was nearing completion!!
Wondering now what on earth was going on, it turned out that the Migration Agent HAD in fact sent off the application but when copying out our details on the new forms, had inadvertently put our email address --.com instead of --.co.uk , an address that happened to exist! So, all the Immigration information that should have come to us had gone astray. All this now meant we had 2 weeks to get the Health Checks done (which we did in Australia) and the UK Police Checks which we did via a courier. Just before Christmas 2014 we had confirmation that we would be given the visas once we had left Australia and they would be issued on our return. So in January 2015 we left the warmth of NSW for the freezing cold & snow of the UK to ship the stored possessions.
Our visa was confirmed when we came back in February 2015 and we have been here enjoying Australia ever since.
In conclusion, yes it was extremely stressful at the time but we don’t regret it. However we would not recommend using an Agent as all the forms are easily downloaded and if you are a native English speaker they are not difficult, just tedious to fill them all in.
