_graciebelle_

Hello everyone - please pardon me if this has already been asked before. I understand this is a UK forum (British looking to migrate to Australia), but has anyone out there had experience with the 309/100 Offshore Partner visa from the USA? Background - I am an Australian Resident looking to return to the Australia. I left Australia 4 years ago, as I got married to an American who lived in America. We have been living here since for the past 4 years, and are both looking to relocate to Australia this year. We are in the process of finalising job offers. My spouse however is an American born national with no Australian visa. We had hopes that he would get work sponsorship via his company, but due to the Australian border closures during the pandemic, they are not currently processing his skills select sponsorship visa. We looked into other options such as the onshore spousal visa, but have the same problem as he cannot enter the country as a foreigner due to border closure unless we apply for a travel exemption - which sounds like it would be the same process as applying for an Offshore Partner Visa (i.e. similar documents to prove the relationship). As such we are looking into the offshore partner visa now - we were initially in two minds about applying for this due to the 18-24month processing times quoted on the Immigration website. But on some of these forums, it seems like these are getting processed within 6 months. I have read a lot of British applications going through Berlin that is getting processed much quicker - I am curious if anyone out there knows what the timelines look like for a US-based application? Thank you.