CollegeGirl

Yes. With the application for the Partner Visa, you get a BVA. Once you have that, you're eligible to apply for a BVB - costs somewhere around $150 AUD if I recall correctly, and takes a couple of weeks. They used to require you to have an important reason to travel, but with the length of processing time these days, they're granting them for pretty much anything, including holidays.

The online system is recent. I'd expect the grants from online applications not to kick in for a good 6 months or so.

I know it feels like it is brand new, but it actually opened to applicants in Mid-December 2013, which means we're right at 8 months now for the first online applicants!

Susie, I think your friend needs to talk to a registered migration agent. Reporting that their relationship is now not legitimate may have consequences for his own visa as well, and you want to go into that with open eyes, knowing what all the options are. This is too complicated a situation for an anonymous forum and requires a professional. Just my two cents.

I agree - get citizenship for all of you. ESPECIALLY if there's a good chance they'll eventually have a parent in both hemispheres, it will make their lives easier as adults as they'll be able to travel freely to see both of you.

From what I've seen on another forum the wait tends to be 3-4 months or so past your eligibility date (two-year anniversary) although it may be taking a little longer for you since you sent them after your eligibility date. Hang in there! It's got to be soon.

Like I said, my partner supports me financially. I do not have a bank account. We do go shopping and go out but he pays using his own card. No credit cards are used and I'm not one for going to the doctor, so I never registered with his doctor.

I think if you said that to Immigration they'd raise both eyebrows. You never go out of the house without your partner? Ever? Crazytown.

Anyway - I agree. Your lack of evidence of living together is so nonexistent it would be suspicious. You probably ARE better off going for a PMV.

Yes. My then-fiance picked a celebrant, put down a deposit, did the NOIM with him, booked our date, etc. They wanted a copy of the NOIM for the PMV application. We ended up changing our date but it wasn't a big deal.

Also, so glad we used George Lombard for our PMV.

Last I had read the significant cost threshold was $35k over 5 years. Is it really $40k now?

Someone on this forum has already verified it with their CO (there was a separate thread on this topic). 10-14 months only applies to new applicants.

Nope. As of about a week ago or so, they upped the wait time to 10-14 months, I'm afraid. Your OH can lodge a NOIM without you there. You just will have to sign it once you're back in Aus. I would pick a wedding date, get the NOIM filled out with that date, but don't actually book anything that you can't get refunded until you have your visa in hand. I know it's hard (I did it myself) but you don't want to have to completely reschedule your wedding if for some reason processing time doesn't go as planned.

You never go grocery shopping, buy petrol, but stamps at the post office, pick up a cup of coffee on your way to the doctor? Really? Okay.

Once initial entry date is set, it's almost impossible to get changed. All you can do is contact your CO and ask, but I think your chances are pretty slim.

Your employer is dumb. Print them out something off the immigration website that says you have the right to live and work indefinitely. You shouldn't have to get an RRV just for an employer that doesn't understand. Your PR visa doesn't "expire." The travel facility on it does.

You might be better off applying and do your medical before anything is diagnosed... just thinking out loud here. I agree contacting George Lombard is going to be your best bet. It's entirely dependent on what they calculate the cost of your care will be. More than $35,000 over a five-year period and it is likely to be a problem.

So you don't have your own bank account - but you must spend money SOMEHOW. No joint bank account with him? You're not on his bank account or credit cards as an authorized user? Surely you have SOME way of spending money - that would be your paper trail.

There is space to describe what the document is, so I would just change the description to something like Incorrect document - please ignore and see other one uploaded titled ___.doc or whatever it is.

Originally Posted by Lady Rainicorn The problem Rachel faced though Michaela was she was not allowed to stay in Australia as she was a dependent on her ex-partners visa - she would have happily stayed and wants her child to have a relationship with his dad but as a SAHM of a two year old was not allowed to stay in Australia with him and not allowed to take him back to the UK without her exes permission which he refused - heartbreaking

 

 

 

 

 

All true, not one word of a lie. Sadly, the majority of people have the same naivety and think that such a thing couldn't happen in a first world country in this day and age.

 

If you don't qualify for a visa then you don't qualify for a visa. The people who work in DIAC don't have empathy or common sense, they work to the rules.

One of the compelling and compassionate circumstances DIBP list for grant of a PR Partner Visa after the breakdown of a relationship is there being a child of the relationship. There ARE provisions in place by which parents are allowed to get PR in order to remain in the country with their children even after their relationship has ended.

I'm aware medicals can be done in Aus. The logistics of waiting out a visa grant in a tourist visa and having to depart and re enter Aus every 3 months can be expensive and the not working can be frustrating.

 

Tbh if the wait time is 10-14 now for offshore and you are going to wait out a chunk on shore it seems to make more sense to me to apply onshore and have work rights while on a bridging visa.

Oh, I fully agree, as long as people are aware of the "genuine temporary entrant" requirements. Frankly I think DIBP just need to relax that even further and let anyone who qualifies come onshore and apply openly. But I think there's as much chance of that happening as there is of me winning the lotto (and I don't play).

I'm sorry to hear this. It seems like they are working to a strict schedule and the 9 month mark is more the reality these days.

 

I think people should be cautious about seeking work in advance of this visa actually being granted unless the job is due to start further on down the road from the latest visa grant date. The immi site does specifically say not to plan life changing events like selling a house or quitting a job before the visa is granted. They do so for a reason. Of course, some do both and there are options if the visa is delayed or runs to the very end of the timeframe given. Renting, staying with family or finding another job till its time to depart the UK. Job hunting in Aus ahead of time can be a risky thing if you are at the mercy of the grant times. I'm sorry your hubby has missed out. Hopefully once his visa is granted and you are in Aus he'll not take too long to find something.

 

And sure plenty of partners (myself included but my visa grant came through well ahead of time) plan to enter Aus ahead of visa grant on a tourist or book a flight for a date after the 9 month window has passed but those are nothing too drastic as flights can be changed, trips out of Aus taken.

 

I think people should exercise more caution with the new longer wait times as it does seem to make it harder to do the tourist visa thing to wait out a grant date. With such a long wait time now the medical or police check won't happen till well down the road after applying and then there is a much wider timeframe of actual grant now, a 6 month period, not a 2 month one. So making it pretty impossible to know when its workable to head to Aus for that stint to wait out the visa grant. I'm sure as the time passes people will have more of an idea as medicals are requested and grants come though. The general rule of thumb when I applied was to have about 6 months within which to validate off the back of medicals and police checks. I would hope its the same or even longer, giving people up to 9 months within which to enter Aus. I can't see it becoming a shorter timeframe but you never know. So we can hope that there is a general pattern that will form.

FWIW, medicals can be done in Australia for offshore visas, so there's really nothing to keep someone from coming over on a tourist visa and waiting it out. Of course, it's a serious hassle without being able to work, and with the usual three-month stay types and having to go offshore between stays and the increasing possibility of being told "you're not supposed to be using it this way." But at least it's possible.

Symen, there are many, many types of visas for Australian immigration. Probably best to have a look at immi.gov.au and use the website to figure out which (if any) you might qualify for.

I know that DIBP tells people not to plan anything until after the visa grant, but isn't a requirement of the PMV that you have a celebrant booked and a Notice of Intended Marriage submitted? I know these arrangements can be changed quite easily, but the visa application process does, nevertheless, require you to choose a marriage date for the NOIM.

Yep, of course it is. But you pick a date for the NOIM, but don't put down any sort of deposit anywhere or send out invitations or do anything for that date that you can't change later because SO many applicants do NOT get approved before the date they picked for their NOIM.

When we did the NOIM, I made sure I picked a date that fell AFTER what I thought would be the latest possible date my NOIM would be approved, but BEFORE the date I thought would be nine months after the EARLIEST my grant would possibly come. We ended up being just about spot-on with our wedding date. But a lot of people don't think to plan it that way, and processing times can change so much that even when you plan it that way you still might not get the grant in time.

Partner Visas (even when married) require evidence of joint household and joint finances. I agree - your best bet is speaking with a good RMA.

If you had to be apart for a period of time AFTER you started living together, then, yes, this would be evidence you stayed in contact. Not GREAT evidence, but evidence. And yes, once you take a screenshot, you can paste it into MSPaint or some other program, save it as a JPG file and upload it. But if you hadn't started living together yet, as snifter and pumpkin have said, this is going to be useless as you in all likelihood hadn't commenced the de facto part of your relationship yet.

You are reading too much into this. Those blue question marks are always there for everyone unless there's a glitch in your browser - it could have been it wasn't properly loading images temporarily for some reason. Your CO doesn't have anything to do with them, I promise. They don't get that specific with you - if they need something else from you or what you uploaded doesn't suffice, they'll email you, not leave you some ambiguous impossible-to-interpret symbol about it. For what it's worth, my account said "no correspondence" as well, even though I'd previously received an acknowledgment. It wasn't until my visa was granted that anything showed up in the correspondence section.