FollowYourBliss

Just received my ceremony invite (by email) for City of Sydney Updated timeline: Date applied: January 22nd 2017 City/Council area: City of Sydney Online / Paper: Online Date of the acknowledgement email: January 22nd 2017 (automatic email) Date of the Citizenship Test invite email: February 6th 2017 Date of the Citizenship Test: May 22nd 2017 (Sydney CBD) Date of the rescheduled Citizenship Test: March 24th 2017 (Sydney CBD - rescheduled on March 6th) Approval letter: March 31st 2017 Date of ceremony: June 28th 2017 (Invitation received June 2nd) So thrilled - was expecting July or August. Best of luck to everyone!

Hi all, thanks for the great advice earlier. Some hope for City of Sydney applicants: on the lucky 13th call to the Citizenship hotline, my test appointment was moved forward by two months! This is my updated timeline: 1. Date applied: January 22nd 2017 2. City/Council area: City of Sydney 3. Online / Paper: Online 4. Date of the acknowledgement email: January 22nd 2017 (automatic email) 5. Date of the Citizenship Test invite email: February 6th 2017 6. Date of the Citizenship Test: May 22nd 2017 (Sydney CBD) 6b. Date of the rescheduled Citizenship Test: March 24th 2017 (Sydney CBD - rescheduled on March 6th) 7. Approval letter: TBD 8. Date of ceremony: TBD Really hoping to get into the July or August ceremonies, fingers crossed! As a note, all the agents I spoke to confirmed that you are no longer able to switch between the CBD and Parramatta offices for tests once you've been assigned a date.

This is so helpful, thank you! That's somewhat frustrating, but I guess all we can really do is keep trying. It really does sound like it boils down to the agent you happen to get. I suppose one cancellation is all is takes for a domino effect, in theory

Finally have a timeline to share! Date applied: January 22nd 2017 City/Council area: City of Sydney Date of the acknowledgement email: January 22nd 2017 (automatic email) Date of the Citizenship Test invite email: February 6th 2017 Date of the Citizenship Test: May 22nd 2017 (Sydney CBD) Date of ceremony: TBD Working on bringing the date forward, spoke on the phone an hour ago (after waiting 3 hours for a callback) to a seriously grumpy lady who stated that the earliest appointments in Sydney CBD are at the beginning of May. She mentioned that there was no way of moving my appointment to the Parramatta office, even though I've seen people on here do exactly that. I'll start calling first thing in the morning instead... Has anyone been successful recently with either a date change in the Sydney office, or being moved to Parramatta? Thank you!

Not the exact same scenario but I was a dependent (secondary) application on my mother's 820/802 visas. I was granted the 802 visa as part of her application and thus our applications were connected; as I arrived in Aus on her visa, I wouldn't have qualified for any type of permanent visa otherwise. However our applications don't need to be joint for the purposes of citizenship - so if it's a case of the daughter wishing to stay in Aus and the father wanting to leave, if PR is applied for and granted the father is free to leave Australia and the daughter can study and apply for citizenship/RRV in her own right. iAs ali mentioned, enrolling her into university on the 457 (as an international student) then finding sponsorship for her would be an incredibly expensive and lengthy endeavour (3 years for the degree, 2 for sponsorship if she's lucky enough to land such a spot straight out of university), definitely moreso than the PR application would cost! (also just to add that the dependency age cap is 25, not 18, so there's no issue there)

Hi all, firstly thanks for sharing your timelines and experiences - thanks to this board I've found out that I'm eligible for citizenship six months earlier than I'd previously thought, due to a conveniently-timed vacation before making the move in mid-2013. I thought the gap between the visas rendered that time moot, but it seems DIBP decided otherwise fortunately! I'm in a similar position with my eligibility as user sapphilor a couple of pages back, but I noticed that they received two different answers. So I just wanted to share what I'd learnt - I called the citizenship hotline number, who acknowledged that my eligibility date was currently four years following my entry to Australia on my first tourist visa, and that there is no hard rule stating that you need to have been in Australia on Day One of the four years ("you can apply when you're eligible") as long as you had entered the country. I found this somewhere else on this forum: https://www.border.gov.au/Citizenship/Documents/acis-july-2014.pdf , and on page 75 (thank goodness for Ctrl+F) they have a guidance note on this exact scenario. As long as you had a valid visa ticking away in the background for the whole time (like my 651 eVisitor) and you had previously entered the country as has been oft-repeated here, you're fine. My timeline for reference: Dec 2012: Entered Aus for 2 weeks Mar 2013: Primary applicant (my mum) relocated to Aus on an eVisitor Jul 2013: Relocated to Aus on an eVisitor Aug 2013: Approved for BVA as secondary applicant (dependent) on 820 Apr 2014: 820 approved Mar 2015: 802 PR applied for Nov 2015: 802 PR granted Mar 2016: Finally notified that 802 PR was granted Dec 2016: Eligible to apply for citizenship (pushed to mid-Jan 2017 due to travel slightly exceeding the 365 day limit) Anyway, sorry that's long winded but hopefully it can help someone else! See you guys in January when my eligibility rolls around