RachelH

Hi all - I am new here! My husband is an Australian citizen but also holds a British passport and has lived in the UK with me since 1995.

We have recently come to the momentous decision to make the move to Australia to give our kids (and us!) a better lifestyle.

We have twin boys aged 18 months and another baby due in November. I just wondered if anyone could offer me any advice about applying for spouse visas. I know i can put all the children on my application and will probably wait for the baby to be born before I apply. What I dont understand from the paperwork is do I need to have medicals etc before I send the application? Or does that just help to speed up the application.

Also on the form that my husband has to fill in to sponsor me are questions about your address in Aus and your income there. He cannot answer these as obviously he lives here with me! Has anyone else been in the same position?

Finally the form asks if I have ever been to Aus before which I have 4 times - it asks for visa numbers but the first would have been in my old passport (gone) and theothers were all electronic so how could I possibly know the visa numbers?

Any help would be gratefully received! Thank you so much!

RAchel

Pollyana

Hi,
Welcome to the madhouse from a fellow spouse visa person!

I got married here so can't answer all the questions, but there are several other posters with Aussie partners who moved from the Uk like you so someone will be along soon!!
In the meantime - for a spouse visa its best to do the medicals first as the visa process is a lot quicker than skills visas. If you do the meds and the police check and submit your passport as well it is usually only a couple of weeks before you get the visa and passport back.

For previous visa info - just put what you can remember. They will soon be able to check it, they are really looking for you to be honest about your past.

And with the children - Moneypen will know the answer to this one, but I think that if their father is an Aussie, then they are Aussie citizens, so don't need visas. They will need Australian passports and they travel on those.

Good luck with the paperwork

iPom

Hi Rachel

OK, putting your kids on to a visa is a bit of a hassle in my opinion, but because they have an Aussie dad, you can apply for certificates of 'Citizenship by Descent' for them, which cost about 80 UK pounds for the first one and the others were discounted (we have three children)
See http://www.dfat.gov.au/ for details.

Once their citizenship certs come through, then you can apply for an Aussie passport for them all which takes about 10 days to come through.

Then,it's just you and your other half who fill in the spouse visa.
It's very easy ...he will essentially sponsor you to live here!

You'll get permanent residency straight away as you've been married for a while and that'll be that. As Pollyanna says, you need to get meds done, and police check through, chuck together a load of stuff as proof of your relationship, plus stat declarations from 2 Australians that you know, pics of your kids, joint accounts, bills in your name, mortgage statements etc and send it all in.

Spouse visas are quick to be processed - I and others got them in under a week.

You are in exactly the same position as I was (British with Aussie husband living in UK for 15 years and three young children) so if I can assist you at all with anything, just IM me and we can chat.

Cheers

Pollyana

Sorry iPom, forgot there were kids with you as well - Moneypen was just the first person that sprang to mind!

iPom

Ah, the bits about being in Aus before, I put down approx dates which they say in the small print in the help booklet, was ok to do. You can add notes on a separate piece of paper if you are unsure, but they're pretty cool with this anyway. If you give approx month, they will find you anyway .. I'mk sure they know who's landed on Aussie shores since the British settled in the place!
There is room in that drop down list (if you're doing it by computer) to say it's approx.


Also, that bit about house in Aus... just put about your house in the UK, with a note next to it, saying house is to be sold and you expect to bring proceeds to Aus to invest in property here.

It's a bit weird isn't it! Actually, I think they assume you're applying in Australia and not in the UK... so think like you're here already, but add notes in that you're not! They will know where you are.

moneypenny20

Looks like I have become surplus to requirements

iPom has said what I was planning on saying but if you want anymore info feel free to shout

iPom

S'all right! Glad to be able to help once! I asked for so much help when I first found this place .... my heart was in my mouth with stress and I was so uncertain. Having been through it, I'm happy to find someone who's visa I know about. I usually feel lost with all the others!

iPom

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!



I just type fast.

iPom

BTW Rachel ... my hub has told me that if your hub has a British Passport, you have to explain a bit more... He has to basically prove he's not lost his Aussie citizenship and that he's still elligable to live there ... It's a bit more form filling in.

RachelH

Hi all and thanks for the advice - sets my mind at rest a bit!! How long do you have to get into the country once you have got the visa? Husband and I thought we might go on a bit of a trip with the kids first, maybe drive across AMerica and have a week in Fiji to relax before all the stresses of setting up home (all reliant on winning the lottery, ha ha).

Ipom - how do I contact you directly - I'm new to the site and havent looked around too much yet.

Last question - can I buy English Marmite in Aus - the 4 times I have been they ahve tried to fob me off with Aussie Marmite and its NOT THE SAME. OR will one of my cases have to be one full of jars.

Cheers all
Rachel

iPom

You can get Marmite here Rachel ...

We had to come into the country within a year of the health examination being valid from ... So for me, I did my meds 8 months previously and the rest we sat around on until we were sure the house was selling. So when my visa was granted, I had 4 more months to get my butt to Aus, which was fine. (8 months waiting + 4 months before meds ran out =12 months) To get longer, get your meds done, then chuck your application straight in. You'll then get just under a year. If you get meds done in July, then you'd have to enter Aus by the next July approx, but they'll let you know when your visa is granted. Hope that makes sense? I am sure a bit of a trip will be fine.

Click on my name and you'll see a box drop down... click on 'send a private message to iPom' and you'll get a message box come up. Type in there and click 'send' at the bottom.
New messages are in your profile, which is a button on the top bar which says 'My Profile'. There are also other settings to alert you when you have a new message (a drop down box will appear etc when you log on here if you wish) but you can work that out later.

moneypenny20

Rachel, my hubby was Aussie born to British parents so he is dual nationality. He moved back to the UK when he was 5 and then went back to Perth for 6 months in 1984 so had no Aus history or address. It was no problem at all, just fill in the form with UK info. When you do your stat dec about your relationship, you can explain the situation then but we didn't bother. He had the passport so they accepted that.

As Poll said, get everything sorted, PCC requested and then do the meds so it all goes off together. Include your passport as well as a certified copy of it, it just saves them asking for it. But do remember to enclosed a pre paid special delivery envelope for them to return your passport and visa to you otherwise they will use good old bog standard Royal Mail.

I had last visited Aus in 1984 so had no idea of the visa number, I just put down the month and year I was there. Had no request for further info.

To be honest, AHC (Australian High Commission) in London are fairly relaxed with spouse visas when the couple are married with children, but you still have to cross the tees and dot the eyes!

Do you have friends or relatives in Aus to do the 888 stat decs? If you do, remember to get them to download the forms here, complete them and get them certified by the JP here together with the copies of their passport/birth certificate/citizenship certificate and then sent back to you before you start. No matter how good friends they are, they can sometimes forget to do it and it's not fun nagging a friend to do you a favour Our friends had put ours in a drawer and got on with life and we were getting very stressed!!

If you don't, just use UK friends and family to do their stat decs - they don't need certifying unless you really want to but they will have to go to the magistrates or solicitors to stamp them, you can't do that for them - I felt that was pushing the friendship a tad too far. Again AHC had no problem with their stat decs being done as letters on addressed headed paper.

Can't think of anything else at the mo, but I do have a a couple of pages of notes I wrote for someone in the same position that I can probably find on the computer if it's of any use.

Penny

thebears

Hi Rachel,

We had similar visa to complete for my wife. We have a 2.5 year old daughter.

My wife had to go through her previous 3 passports as she went to school in Melbourne when she was 13 on a student visa. They still had all the records of her visits back then. They are just checking for any potential case of overstaying previous visa's.

Details of income can be from the UK - its just to show consistent income to support you.

The medicals are too consider any potential burden on the Australian healthcare.

It only took a few days to be okayed for us once all the paper work was submitted. Although the biggest delay was waiting for the police reports to come back and getting birthcertificates etc translated.

Kiwi

ElshaUK

I am also embarking on this....I am the Aussie citizen (english born) and I am sponsoring my OH.

It is all very stressful but I am finding, being organised as much as possible is keeping my stress levels down!

That and the beer

Good luck!!

If anyone else is going through this at the moment then feel free to PM me, least we can stick together through this whole sponsorship thing

moneypenny20

Something that helped me big time when sorting all the paperwork out, was, when it started getting on top of me, I would stop and think about the majority of folk on here who have to go through TRA and other assessing bodies, and then doing the visa application. After that, it would remind me that actually the Spouse visa was a piece of cake and quit stressing.