Dispo

I don't know for certain but I'd be surprised if they were assessing your intent to move. The visa assesses the nature, strength and reality of the relationship. If you are still together after two more years then based on that you should justify the 100. The 'intent' I would think comes from the fact that you have paid $7000+ for the visa application, why would you do that unless you planned to move. If however plans change and you choose to not move to Oz then I cant see why Oz would be concerned, they are not losing anything by you not moving and you paid for the time and effort of the visa application so they are not out of pocket either - you are. Just as an aside don't forget about the requirement to activate the visa. You need to visit Oz within 12 months of the medical / police check (not the visa grant date) otherwise your 309 will be cancelled and the 100 definitely won't happen.

So I can only comment on the way it was done for our application (which was via an agent). My agent created an Immi account and a partner application which resulted in an online 47SP. I filled that in and submitted the application with payment etc. to get the application rolling. My sponsor filled in the downloadable 40SP PDF, this was printed, signed, scanned and then uploaded as supporting documentation within my Immi account. There was only one created, not one for sponsor and one for applicant. (We had been in discussions with the agent for several weeks prior to actually submitting the application with payment and had collected all required evidence . Once submitted my agent was able to upload all the pre-collected evidence as soon as the option became available rather then having to wait for us to compile it). As with all of this there doesn't seem to be any right way of doing things, just many wrong ways. Again this was my experience, but there was only one fee and it was collected as part of submitting the 47SP, eg the applicant form. The sponsor was not required to submit any fee.

So for the 47SP I filled in the PDF version ready to be uploaded, but when my agent created the Immi account and created the application it resulted in an online version of the 47SP that needed to be filled in and as a result my PDF version wasnt uploaded. An interesting quirk of the online 47SP was that it differed from the downloadable PDF version and was dated 2013 (I think) - but it was created by the application process so there was no chance of it being the wrong version. For statements my agent said about a joint statement but I had read that individual statements were better so we did those. We had also researched what should be included in the way of 'evidence'. For actual evidence I had compiled all sorts of stuff, holiday photos, boarding passes from a recent holiday. etc etc. but my agent said (depending on the CO you got) that they were much more interested in financial evidence and in the end we submitted 3 years worth of bank statements (only 1 year as a joint account), bills and utility bills in separate names but common address going back 12 months, payslips going back as far as we could, all sorts of stuff to support the co-habitation and therefore the de-facto. This also contradicted some of the other stuff I had read that put more emphasis on social evidence. The online version of the 47SP has sections that cover what is supposedly required in the statement, each has a 2000 character limit. My statement was uploaded but I also copied the text from my statement into the online form and where one section didnt fit cut the word count down and said refer to my statement for full detail. The more I read the more I believe that there is no right answer, its luck of the CO looking at the case and what their preference is for meaningful evidence.

It's definitely confusing - we did certified copies etc. as stated above which were then sent to the agent. I had also seen 'current' advise on what should be certified etc. and it differed to what we were asked for by the agent. We went with what the agent said - as that was the whole point of engaging him - and it clearly worked. I hadn't thought about it (to be honest it was all a bit quick) but I now realise that those documents were then scanned by the agent and uploaded. I remember seeing the entries in the attachment list and the medical clinic had a printout of my passport scan (which must have come from the paper document I sent to the agent). It may be that the certified copies meant that paper copies were available if asked for - rather than just having scans and needing to get certified copies done quickly if asked. One example where this would be expensive or delayed is the British birth certificate. I only had the short form and needed the full one with both parent names. These can be ordered easily enough but they are now copyrighted so making a certified copy of them is actually a breach of copyright and the solicitor I used to do the witnessing / certifying refused to do it (understandably). It wasn't an issue as I just sent the official one I had received (it was itself a certified copy of an official document), however if I needed to get one quickly it would be a pain. It's possible that the confusion comes from the fact that 'offshore' covers the rest of the world and there are bound to be variations between countries and high commissions. The above worked fine in the UK, but may not apply elsewhere. They obviously reserve the right to ask for real paper certified copies, its whether they do or not that varies.

We did certified copies of birth certificates, passports, marriage / divorce / name change documents. The statutory declarations by supporting family / friends were witnessed by a solicitor. (being offshore these were not done on 888 forms but I believe a commonwealth form). The declarations by myself and my partner were scans of the signed documents, these were neither witnessed nor certified. Everything else, bank statements, utility bills, proof of address etc. etc. were all scans to pdf. I did complete a form 80 but it was never included in evidence by the agent and apparently not asked for.

You have to activate the visa by entering Oz within one year of the medical date or the police check date - whichever is earlier. For me the police check came in on 21st Feb and the medical was finalised on the 28th Feb - so I have to go to Oz (even if I just arrive and then leave again) before 21st Feb 2019. My last date of entry is 5 years from the date that the visa was granted. Even though it gives me the right to permanent residency it only gives me the right to leave Oz and return for 5 years. If I left after that date and tried to re-enter I would be denied. To keep the right to leave and return I will need to get a RRV (right to re-enter ??) visa every 5 years or go for citizenship. Needless to say, even though we cant move that quickly, we are going to make a holiday of it and not just arrive and leave. All in all I don't understand the activate requirement, it seems unnecessary, especially as it is tied to the checks rather than the date that the visa was granted.

To be honest the speed of the visa has caught us out, the plan was to spend 2018 getting the house ready to sell and thinking about all the other aspects of moving whilst we waited for the visa to come through and then look at 2019 to move. Even with the visa now available we are not in a position to speed that up much if at all.

I debated whether to use an agent or not and the decider was the lack of appeal for offshore applications. The visa itself was $7000 (roughly £4100) plus £400 in medical and police check fees. There is a lot of confusing, inaccurate and now out of date info about the application process and it was almost impossible to tell how amenable or belligerent the application process is - for all I knew one simple mistake / misunderstood / incorrectly answered question could have resulted in a rejected application so I decided to not take the risk. Overall this process is going to cost me a lost of money so the additional fee for the agent, whilst not small, was worth it to me for the peace of mind. I chose Greg Veal through Taylor Hampton solicitors and whilst I think the level of communication with him was not as good as it could have been I can definitely say (based on his requests) that we submitted a lot more evidence and with a lot more detail than we would have if I had been doing the application alone. He was also very helpful in clarifying which documents needed to be certified, which needed to be witnessed by a solicitor and which could be just high quality scans. Most if not all of that I would have got wrong with more being certified and witnessed than necessary. It's impossible to say how much an agent helped the process but what I can say is that the only request for extra info we received was for medical and police checks and if you take the time waiting for the medical tests and results out of the overall submission then we were actually granted the visas in four days - 2 day wait at the beginning before being asked for the checks and two days wait at the end after indicating that the required info had been supplied.

So I submitted my application on Wednesday 7th February 2018 expecting to wait 4-5 months before I would be asked for the medical and police checks - as a result I had not done them in advance. Two days later on Friday 9th February I was asked for the police check and medical. Police check completed on 21st Feb Medical taken on the 22nd, results completed and submitted on 28th. Visas granted on 2nd March 2018 (both 309 and 100 granted at the same time). Even when I applied I was reading that processing times were 8-11 months for offshore applications, I was not aware of anyone posting about shorter times (basically I wasn't reading this forum) so was very surprised by the 2 days it took to be asked for the checks. I also never received any notification of a CO being appointed just the emails that came through asking for more info (checks). Something has definitely changed with (UK at least) partner applications. Just some background, I have been with my partner since June 2011 although from the Immi point of view we have been de-facto since March 2013. We both live in the UK and my partner / sponsor is Australian by birth. We did use a migration agent as the whole process is a minefield and there is no appeal for refused offshore applications. OMG - now I need to look at booking flights for the activation.