LauraF
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Everything posted by LauraF
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Does anyone please have a spreadsheet that includes wait times for those who hold a 820 temporary awaiting a 801 permanent?
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Aha it's looking good for us June'ers now! I applied on the 13th June and got my visa granted today - that was a 5 and a half months wait. If you've passed the 5 month mark I think it's worth phoning your case officer to check, as my fiance called ours today to check progress and it was granted within minutes of the phone call. 9 months of being apart and I'm just so nervous now it's finally happened! It kind of felt like a distant dream that whole time but now it's real, eek!
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Snap, we sent ours off on the same date. They don't seem to have started on June applications yet, I'll be keeping a hawk eye on this thread and that spreadsheet to see when our month gets moving. Good luck
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Congratulations! After such a long wait (and I think you've been away from your partner all this time too) you deserve to be so happy and excited right now. I think it the difference between our weather and Adelaide's might take some adjusting to though, they've been in the 30s this past week (and huntsmans out in force my fiance reports!) On my front, it's 5 months since I sent my visa off on 13th June, so hopefully I'll have a date in enough time to get over there by Christmas. It will be interesting to know if there will be any difference between the May and June processing times since I applied only 2 weeks before the extended processing time came into effect so things might slow down a little bit for us June people. Hopefully not too much though! I'm keeping an eager eye out for the first June person to get granted now. SusieB were you told in advance when your visa would be approved? Definitely need to escape for Christmas with my Mr!
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I applied on the 13th June and am planning on going over there to see my partner asap, either waiting if it's still 5 months or going on a tourist visa a month earlier if it's the 6 months. Trouble is, my CO (AB) unlike others, will not give me a rough timeframe yet. I think it's to do with the change in processing times but he did say for those who applied in June it looks like it may be nearer the 6 months than 5. Very vague and uncertain answer which I can understand, but at the same time it makes things very difficult to organise. I'm going to wait a bit longer and keep asking.
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My CO is still giving nothing away so I really don't know what to do, I need some advice. You're not the only person who lodged 2 weeks before me who has already been given a date but I'm still being quoted 5-6 months and they're not in a position to tell me when it will be granted apart from that it will likely be 'nearer' to 6 than 5 months. I've told them that I'm considering flying over on a tourist visa a month before my due date but that would just be a guess, I'm thinking perhaps he just said nearer to 6 to be on the safe side in which case if I fly out a month before the 6 month mark I may need to head to NZ to be offshore not soon afterwards.... making it not worth it. It's going to cost us a lot for the NZ holiday to fly from Adelaide then accommodation but I think it's do-able. Just not sure whether it's worth it just to see each other a month sooner (can only afford a month of not working) as it would mean extra costs (flight,accommodation,tourist visa, leaving my job earlier and not being able to work in Aus immediately.) But on the other hand, it's been 6 months apart so far, every day is a struggle without him and I absolutely hate my temp job and living situation over here. It seems to be a catch 22, any recommendations to sway me one way or the other? It's all up to me really. What I say to him goes, hehe.
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I'm not sending mine using a specialist service like that. Although it's clearly cheaper I don't have much stuff and will need (or want) a lot of it to already be there when I arrive which is why I'm not waiting for my visa to be approved first. I've sent a load of clearly women's clothes (and high heels!) addressed to my fiancés father... believe it or not, as I will be staying at his home address initially so he will be going to collect the parcel from the PO hence it needed to be in his name. I'm not worried that the stuff is clearly not meant for him as I think they x-ray stuff and only open it if something looks a bit suspect, even if they did have a look through it if there's nothing against regulations in there I don't think they'd care who it's addressed to. I mean you're sending your stuff to someone else you know to stay in their care as far as I see it. I've done this before when I came back home from my working holiday in Aus and there were no problems with the addressing of the parcel to someone else to look after in my absence.
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I just went to the post office and asked for shipping, their cheapest service was with Parcel Force which apparently takes 6 weeks to get there but they gave me a few different options depending on how and when I wanted the parcel to arrive. They charged £88 for a 7kg box of clothes which is about what I expected. I've one or two more boxes to send over but thankfully I don't own very many things so the rest will fit in my normal suitcase. I'm going to pack up my DVDs and books now but don't want to send them off until I'm completely sure there won't be any customs/tax type problems. I start a new job tomorrow so even though I've been packing stuff and working towards my move, it seems like everythings taking a big step backwards with settling down into work life over here. Ever since I finished university I've just been waiting to start my life in Aus while simply wasting my days over here, does anyone else feel like they're living in a very large waiting room with not enough magazines to read?
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I've just sent a box of clothing to be shipped To Aus ahead of me - does anyone know whether there are any restrictions (like with tax) on DVDs and books? As I want to get all of my stuff out of the way and sent over there. Thanks.
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Oh dear, so much conflicting news! According to the spreadsheet, SusieB only applied 2 weeks before we did and has already been given a date which makes her approval bang on the 5 month mark. Well, even if it's now 6 months, that makes our wait 3.5 months longer at the most.
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Congrats Anika and eggwise! you must be so excited after not seeing each other for so long. I'm happy for you both I emailed AB about 3 weeks ago to ask when my visa would likely be approved and he just told me the generic 5-6 months. How did you figure out it was 'due' to be granted at the end of October, did you just work out that was 5 months after your application or did your CO give you a ballpark estimation? Since I'm just wondering when to phone my CO to ask about booking flights early, as my own 5 month mark will be mid November and I see you applied only a couple of weeks before I did - so do you think that means I'd get a date from them if I asked myself in a couple of weeks time (ie at the same stage in the process you asked and got a reply?) I'm just not sure what to expect of them and don't want to get my hopes up although your news is really great I'm hoping my case won't for some reason be different I really want to book my flights to get over there almost immediately after mine has been approved, if possible so I can only do that if I know my date in advance. Apologies if that sounded way more complicated than I intended! Very eager here!
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How long before the 5 months is up do you think I should ask for a date? I want to book flights and get there are soon as possible as we've been apart for nearly 6 months already and there are still 3 months to go until the 5 month mark (which I still hope it will be as I applied in June.)
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So you think if the wait has changed, or is changing to 6-8 months, those who submitted before July (Aus financial year) will still be on the 5-6 month wait they were originally told? K17 apparently submitted at the end of May and has been told of the extension, I submitted mid-June and was told only last week that the wait has not changed after hearing other people were earlier informed of the change. So I'm really not sure what's going on here. I'm confused why some people have been told this and others have not. Can anyone shed any light?
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Me and my fiancé had been living together for 1 and a half years in England (Also for a year before that in Aus.) We applied for the visa after spending just over 3 months apart because he had to go home to study. There has been no problems with it and I've been told they have all the necessary information. Just make sure you mention in your declaration why you are currently apart (ie job/study/visa problems) and it should be absolutely fine, especially if you've already lived together for that long!
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I was worried about processing times possibly increasing so I sent off a quick email to check - I was advised today that current waiting times are still 5-6 months. It sounds like they might be changing in the near future though, but hopefully if we've already sent our applications off that shouldn't affect us too much and lets hope the 6-8 months is an overestimation just so they're on the 'safe side' anyway. I worry far too much! Here's crossing fingers. James- it could take you a while to fill in all the paper work and collect documentation, so I'd start looking into it as soon as possible. It took me and my fiance 2 months to gather all the paper work which has delayed us being together for that time! After it's sent off, as I've stated above at the moment it looks like 5-6 months/
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That's great news! It might just mean me going over there a month before the grant is due, but even knowing that is a relief because it gives me some hope of seeing him sooner. A holiday to NZ sounds nice too but again money was the issue with taking a Holiday Visa over there in the mean time ... perhaps something can be worked out though. Thank you Could someone please add me to the spreadsheet? I don't have a google account.
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Ooh can you do that... go to NZ for the grant date rather than having to be back in the UK? We (well... he) is saving up for my flight over there at the moment (for when the visas granted) which will only take a couple of months - so that would be financially possible. If it's allowed by the visa.
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Unfortunately neither of us can afford the cost of flights to send me over there on a holiday visa in the mean time. So right now it looks like by the time I get over there we would be apart for around 11 months after previously living together here for 15 months (and 10 months in Aus before that.) Could I also be added to the database? I applied on 13/06 through the London office for a PMV.
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We had no idea it would take this long, he was here with me for 15 months and left back for Aus in early March. If I knew all of this before and could go back in time we'd get on to this way before he left but along with the long processing times I was also surprised how long it took to compile the application and evidence (about 2 months just to get it ready!) Yes it looks like you're right, the stories I heard of visas being granted in only a few weeks seem to have been from around 2009 and 2010, something must have changed since then in immigration procedure. Damn it, where's my time capsule again!
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Thanks Dave, well that's just taken my current waiting time only up to 3 weeks... so another 5 months to go perhaps. Additionally, I'm now worried that we should have applied for a 309 spousal since we've been together for 3 years and have lived together. On the PMV I know we'll have to apply for the 309 after 9 months which is additional cost and stress at the same time we're getting married and trying to move in together on an extremely limited budget. We decided against spousal since we didn't have the documentation outlined in booklet one of "setting up a household together" and absolutely no shared financial bills - since we lived with each other at our parents places and had very little evidence of a 'de facto' relationship. With the 300 PMV apart from the intention of marriage certificate - all we sent to prove our relationship were declarations from people of our relationship and bank statements showing overlap of address.... that would not have been enough for a 309 spousal visa right? ... or is it worth asking my case officer. I'm not even sure whether it can be "swapped" at this point anyway but I suppose I'd like the absolute ease of mind that we did the right thing.
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Yes looking at recent stories it looks like it really will be the time stated but I hoped that was an over estimation and subject to individual applications (I think mine is a straight forward case, so hoped would make a difference). I just wondered because in this thread in 2009 people seemed to be getting their visas approved in only a couple of weeks - now it is 6 months that is a big difference. Is this due to newly introduced capping/ an increase in applications or did those people just get lucky? Do you know whether that will that count from when I submitted my application or when they received the additional police and health check they asked for? I know I should just chill but I can't. We've already been apart for 4 months, so plus the 6 months waiting time then another month to sort out flights etc, that's a year apart.... scary.
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I'm applying for a slightly different visa, the subclass 300 (prospective marriage) although both the Australian and London websites state that both the 300 marriage and 309 spouse visas have exactly the same processing times of around 6 months (http://www.immi.gov.au/about/charter.../visas/5.0.htm and http://www.uk.embassy.gov.au/lhlh/immi_processing_times.html) Does this mean that the 12 week waiting time quoted by the original poster in 2009 has increased since - or are 309 spousal visas for some reason taking much less time to approve than 300 marriage ones, despite the waiting times quoted being exactly the same (6 months not 12 weeks for both.) I went to the Bridgewater clinic which cost £260, so exactly the same fee as the one in Whalley Range. I was only there for half an hour, they got everything done quickly without any waiting in between although it was very thorough (get ready to be poked and prodded in only your underwear!) I hadn't shaved... it was pretty embarrassing.