moliere19

3 hours ago, Jill G said:

Visas issued today!! Followed Andrew's advice, emailed evisitor.helpdesk@homeaffairs.gov.au. received a reply within 24 hours

Thank you SO much Andrew. The chat page is sooo helpful. Flights booked for next week. Cant see family after two long years. 

Woo Hoo Jill! Well done, brilliant news and great that it worked.

Andrew 

20 minutes ago, bowbow said:

Hi - does anyone know how long a travel exemption and visitor visa is valid for prior to using it? E.g. could my mother start the process now even if she didn't actually want to fly until say March? Given the uncertainty around timings for approvals I'd be minded to get the ball rolling, but obviously don't want to do that only for the exemption/visitor visa to expire before they need to be used! 

My suggestion would be to apply for the visa immediately as even the E visitor visa is valid for 12 months. You can’t apply for the travel exemption until 2 months before the date of travel but these seem to come through in a few days in our experience. Make sure you include the visa application reference number on the travel exemption request. There is a drop down box on the form asking about visa. Tick applied and add the visa reference and hopefully you should be ok.

Andrew

2 hours ago, Jill G said:

Congratulations Andrew, could you give me the email address for the eVisitor help desk please. I'll try that route. Many thanks

Hi Jill,

The email address we used, as shown in the post, is:

evisitor.helpdesk@homeaffairs.gov.au 

Good luck 

Andrew

A beacon of hope for anyone still waiting for their visa after receiving their travel exemption. Our travel exemption was approved in late November and ever since we have been sweating on getting the visa even having to cancel flights we had booked for late December. Then this morning our visas arrived, yipee! Having said that I don't think it just happened without prompting. We had already emailed the eVisitor helpdesk in December but got no response (perhaps closed for Xmas/New Year?) so we again sent an email to them last Saturday and the email we received today, with the visas attached to it, was from the helpdesk. There are 2 email addresses for the helpdesk, one that seems to work and the other one that doesn't. For anyone who may need to try this avenue the email address we used successfully is: evisitor.helpdesk@homeaffairs.gov.au   

Hopefully this will work for you but just to also advise that we got our daughter to contact her local MP to try and put some pressure on immi to sort our case out. They were closed until Monday 10th January but when they returned they immediately called our daughter and then emailed her requesting all the details so they could resolve the issue. I'm not sure all MP's will be so proactive and treat it with urgency but at least they were prepare to take on our case if it wouldn't have been resolved by the visas being granted today.

Thank you to all of you that has provided guidance and advice to us during this stressful time and good luck everyone.

Andrew 

7 hours ago, Jill G said:

Please help. Got exemption 4 Dec for myself & my husband to visit Aussie family and grandchildren. Applied for evisa651 on 10th Dec. Nothing. Had to cancel flights for 7th Jan. Phone UK embassy. They don't deal with applications. Said phone Aus home affairs, who couldn't help, just referred me to their webpage. Frustrating when some folk get visas straightway.

Hi Jill,

We’re in the same situation with our travel exemption being granted at the end of November. All very frustrating having to cancel flights and not knowing when we can rebook. In desperation we applied for a second travel exemption and that was granted last week but still no visa. If we haven’t got the visa by later this week we’re going for the nuclear option of withdrawing the application and then submit a new one and then probably also apply for a third travel exemption just to see if that works. Other than that we will change our names by deed poll to Djokovic!

Andrew 

9 hours ago, Tulip1 said:

I applied for a 651 visa on 27th Dec and then applied for an exemption as an immediate family member, adding the TRN number to the application (both done on the same day). I received my exemption on 29th Dec but my visa application is still pending.  I’m not travelling until next month but I’ve seen on here many saying the visa quickly followed the exemption.   Should I be worried?

I hope you’ll be ok but we got our travel exemption in November and still haven’t got our visas. We reapplied for the travel exemption again hoping this might jog the system as we included the visa application reference numbers. The second exemption came through on 5th January but still no news on the visas. Spoke with Immi last night and they said they couldn’t give us any information as we are within the processing time of up to 15 months!. Friends of ours applied for both travel exemption and visas on 29th December and got the exemption on 4th January and their visas the following day so it looks like the system is working. I think our case is probably an exception.

1 hour ago, Karl D said:

Hi- just an update - got our exemption today and the visas approved separately within the hour.

so timeline if it helps anyone;

applied for e651 on 22nd Dec- received confirmation and TRN of pending 

applied for exemption on 26th Dec quoting TRN from visa app

received exemption email 31st Dec

received completed visas as granted on 31st Dec

just travel declaration to do 7 days prior to travel and we are off!

Grandkids here we come!

Great news Karl. We resubmitted our travel exemption request on 29th, with the e651 TRN, so here’s hoping ours gets processed in a similar timely fashion.

18 hours ago, Culterguy said:

moliere19

Your experience is pretty well the same as ours. We applied for exemption 28th October, got approved within a few days. We applied for evisa and then nothing for weeks. As Our flight date approached 4th Dec, I applied for exemption again, this time had the visa application reference to put in. Concluded that we should have put visa application before exemption although how you are supposed to know that? Anyway the 2nd Exemption was approved after 4th Dec, and as I guessed evisa approved a day or two later. We had to cancel flight , moved to march 22. There was an interesting article in Sydney paper sent by by son, which indicated that we are not alone. The system was poorly thought through when 1st November opend to close family of oz citizens. I had advised some friends I know in the same boat, to do their Visa first before exemption and what do you know, they got their evisa and then exemption within a few days.

Thanks for the info. We are not alone. I've written to immi helpdesk with all our details and will give them a few days to respond but if we haven't heard anything by early January I think we'll start the process over again but this time applying for the visa first. As you say how are you supposed to know that!

11 hours ago, Lavers said:

Hiya

We got our E651 approved within the hour and the travel exemption within the week for my mother in law.

Did you have to submit any evidence?

We submitted everything requested with the application which was all standard things. If we don't get a positive response to our email, or indeed the visas,  I think we will start the whole process again when the holiday period has ended and immi are back at work. 

We applied for the travel exemption in mid November and received the TER approval on 28th November. We had previously submitted a visitor visa 600 application in September and the status of that just showed received so we then submitted a e-visitor application on 29th November for travel on 30th December. To date we have heard nothing on either application despite immi saying they are prioritising applicants with a travel exemption. We have called them twice but get no definitive information so we have therefore cancelled our flights. Has anyone else had a similar experience or even a better experience where you have received both a TER and a visa? We just want to know if everyone else is in the same situation as us or whether our application has somehow got missed. Thanks for any info.

On 18/08/2021 at 17:12, bicek said:

Thanks @paulhand.

Do you know if it's possible to apply for the e-visitor 651 whilst you have a visitor 600 application being processed?

I have both visa applications in at the moment and spoke to immi just before Christmas and they said it was OK to leave them both live.

We use a company called 'Go Walkabout Travel Insurance' as they can provide cover for the exact number of days you will be absent from the UK. 

I wrote to my MP about this issue in 2014 and thought you might like to see the response.

Thank you for your e-mail of 31 March.  I appreciate that you concerned that some British expatriates, who have paid taxes and made National Insurance contributions during their working lives, are not entitled to pension up-rating.

The UK state pension is payable worldwide and is up-rated abroad where there is a legal requirement to do so.  Overseas residents are not entitled to pension up-rating, unless a relevant treaty or agreement exists.  It has been, and remains, the policy of successive governments not to enter into new agreements with countries or territories where this would include up-rating pensions in order to contain the long-term cost of the UK social security system and ensure that it remains affordable.

To do so would cost hundreds of millions of pounds at a time when the pressure on a welfare system is considerable and when the Government is asking many people who live in the UK to make sacrifices.

This issue has been examined extensively by the domestic courts, culminating in a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in 2010.  In all these cases the courts have found in favour of the Government.

I am sorry if this was not the answer that you were seeking, but I hope that this at least helps explain the reasoning behind these difficult decisions.  Thank you for drawing this issue to my attention.

Hi Nannychris,

It should be possible to emigrate and there are different visa's that you can apply for. As you are both over 65 you can apply for the aged parent visa 804 but I think the waiting list is quite long for that one (13 years???). An alternative is the Aged Parent Contributory 864 visa but that is very costly. I also think it should be possible for you to go to Australia on a Tourist Visa 600 and then apply for the 804 whilst you are there. This will then allow you to stay on a Bridging Visa C until the Visa 804 is approved although it does not allow you to join Medicare so you need to take out private medical cover whilst you are waiting. You may want to take expert advice from a migration agent to verify that I am right in my understanding but I have done quite a lot of research so hopefully I am not misleading you. A couple of links to the relevant visa sites are below for your info.

As for the pro's & con's I can't really help as we are not in Oz yet and are going through the same thought processes but basically the main obvious benefits are that you are near your family and the weather is probably better with the downside probably being the cost of living but of course the latter depends upon each individuals financial position.

Hope this helps

Andrew

http://www.immi.gov.au/Visas/Pages/804.aspx

http://www.immi.gov.au/Visas/Pages/030.aspx

Hi Phoebe,

I've also emailled my MP. I urge others to do so and keep the pressure on to see if we can make progress.

Andrew

Hi Summerdaisy,

Here is the link. Just hit the 'live tab' then the 'parent' tab. Sounds like you are having a great time, any issues with the cost of living?

Andrew

http://www.immi.gov.au/Help/Pages/fees-charges/visa.aspx

Hi Everyone,

Newbie member here although have been reading some of the recent posts over the last couple of weeks as a guest. I have a few questions but will post them separately to keep it simple.

Both our daughters have Oz PR and our 1st grandaughter has just been born there so we are thinking of applying for a parent contributory visa. Aside from staggering the cost what are the benefits of applying for a 173 before lodging the 143. Do they get processed quicker for example?