175 - Front loaded application - question on medicals

[Guest Helchops]

Hey All,

 

We are in the process of putting together our 175 VISA application. We are going with an Australian Migration Agent that comes very highly recommended and has a 98.9% success rate.

 

The agent has suggested front loading our application, with meds and character references etc all ready to go with the application.

 

She said in her experience as an agent this often gets things moving quicker. However she did say that in doing so you put yourself at risk of only having a short amount of time to pack up your life here and get over to Australia to get your VISA stamped.

 

You may say there is the easy solution of flying out there, getting VISA stamped and then coming back to England to sort things out (as you have 5 years to go once the VISA is stamped). However we have a small baby who will be 1 when we do this and i don't think that it is fair to make her do 4 plane journeys.

 

What we didn't ask was if our VISA was granted and we had say only 6 weeks to validate our VISA, could we pay for our medicals to be done again and send them off for approval? £700 works out cheaper than paying 3 airfares 4 ways.

 

Your opinions are very welcome!!!

 

Thanks

 

Carlie, Dan and Helena

[essextoaus]

175s are currently taking between 12-18mths to be processed (current ESTIMATE only). Front loading your meds and PCC before being allocated a CO will have absolutely no bearing on your application. Why not do your meds and PCCs say 9 mths after application (it will be the date that the first of these are finalised which will determine the date of your initial entry (ie 1 yr after)). Also if you do your meds now, and your visa takes over a yr to be processed (likely at this stage), then they'll be invalid anyway. Good luck.

[Guest Helchops]

Thanks for that we appreciate the advise however my question is ...could we pay for our medicals to be done again and send them off for approval if it is looking like we are not going to get the VISA within the 12 month period?

 

Or once they are submitted is that it???

 

Thanks

 

Carlie, Dan and Helena

[cjdrum]

I'd agree with essex.

 

If you front load with a 175, you face two potential problems:

 

- wasting the medicals/PCC cash as you're not a visa within 12 months

- getting the visa but having a v short space of time to validate

 

If you were going cat 2 (with sponsorship) your visa would come much quicker and so frontloading would make some sense, but if I were you I would lodge without frontloading, and then keep an eye on the processing emails from imm.gov.au (send a blank email to their address and you get the email by return) and when they are coming up to allocating case officers up to your point of lodging, you could then get your meds/PCCs done

 

Why take the risk?

[rammygirl]

In answer to your question once the visa is granted you cannot re-do the meds or police checks. You will be given a date by which you must enter and they will not extend this unless you have a very good reason (death, birth or illness usually).

 

You could re-do them during the process if visa is taking a long time but as previously said why not wait until asked for both PCCs and meds or at least wait until you are likely to be allocated a CO.

 

Are you in a mad rush to get out there??

 

Only reason to do them early would be if you had a medical/criminal conviction and you wanted to know the score early.

 

Personally I would hang fire for both PCCs and Meds