Hi,
I am an Australian who has been living in the UK for 7ish years. My boyfriend (Scottish) and I are hoping to move to Australia next year, hopefully around August 2022. We are weighing up between two routes -
a) he applies for the working holiday visa, with the aim to get sponsored by a company within the first year, and eventually applying for the Partner Provisional Visa (309) and then the Partner Permanent visa (100). He is 30 years old currently, turning 31 in 6 weeks, so we would need to apply for this soon!
b) we apply for the Partner Provisional Visa now, and hope that it is approved within the next 12 months or so. We are not married, but we are living together and have been together for 3+ years. Although we cohabited for most of COVID at his parents house, we only 'officially' moved in together 3 months ago.
So my questions are as follows (sorry there are a few!)
- which route would you say is better?
- will the working holiday visa get us to Australia quicker?
- are we unlikely to be approved for b) given we don't have joint bills etc dating from a year ago? We have loads of other stuff - family holiday pics, whatsapps, emails, etc
- we are considering getting married in the next year anyway. Would it help our application to do it before applying for route b)?
- Are wait times completely blown out due to COVID? What do you think is a realistic time frame at the moment?
If anyone has any or all the answers to the above, I would love to hear them!
Thanks :)