Hi,
My fiance and I are at a loss right now of what steps to take next. I'm hoping that someone here has some kind of insight into what our next move can and should be. For reference, I am a Canadian citizen and my partner is Romanian. He is the primary applicant and is sponsored through his work. I came to Australia almost 4 years ago on a working holiday visa, and my partner came on I believe, a 407 visa or something similar. Some kind of internship, 1 year visa.
Yesterday, we were refused an RSMS 187 visa based on the fact that he had not successfully passed the IELTS test until 2 days after the migration agent (that was supplied from his work) had put in the application. While she states that she had no choice but to put in the application at that time due to time constraints, we still had about another 3 weeks remaining on our previous 12 month visa that we were on at the time. She could have waited the 2 days just in case, but told us at the time that it would be fine even if he passed the test after the application was lodged. Obviously, this was not the case.
We have been attempting to apply for sponsored visas through my partner's employer for going on 3 years now. Every time we have tried, something has been done incorrectly by various registered migration agents that has further complicated the matter. First, it was a 457 visa submitted under the wrong job heading. We were denied the nomination for that one. Then, upon applying for the 187, we were told to plan our wedding immediately to ensure that they could not say we were not together lawfully. We planned our overseas wedding with all of our family, only to find out months before it that as we were on a Bridging C visa, we are not eligible for a Bridging B visa. While we were granted priority processing in the hopes of making it to our wedding, we still had to cancel everything and lost all money we had put into it. This priority processing led to an accepted nomination, but a sped up refusal.
We know have 35(?) days to leave the country and have no idea what to do. The migration agent and his work has suggested that we "go, hang out somewhere for about 6 months" out of country while they reapply for the 187 for another approx. $10,000. We would then come back and try again. It would take another, at this point, 22-25 months to go that route and this is after 6 months of either not working in my partner's country (language barrier) or paying to bring him as my fiance to Canada, where he may not be able to work for up to a year, and then trying to come back. We could just give up and go to Canada, but our life is here after almost 5 years in Australia. This is home.
We don't know what to do.
We have been told that appealing through the AAT would just be prolonging the inevitable refusal, so it's not worth the attempt. We don't want to spend another 2 years or so just waiting to be refused again.
I have also been told through my work that I could apply for the 187 as an office manager, but from what I have read, lately a majority of those have been refused. And it is again, another $10,000 and 22-25 months of waiting and hoping that we are not refused again.
Do we have any options? Any insight at all would be appreciated.