British Expats - Yippee!!!

British Expats (https://britishexpats.com/forum/)

- Australia (https://britishexpats.com/forum/australia-54/)

- - Yippee!!! (https://britishexpats.com/forum/australia-54/yippee-107298/)

If today had been 1st April I would have been sure someone was playing a cruel joke on us.

This morning we had a call from the nice man at London Australia House advising us that he can approved our PR visa. The call came out of the blue and as my husband is neither in IT or a Nurse we were very shocked!! But it feels great!!

We applied November 2000 so it has been a long wait. As we are going on holiday to Perth on Wednesday he won't actually finalise our application until we return but has asured us there will be no problems. We can either have the visa issued with the current medicals and police clearence certificate and our first entry date will be August 2002 or we can get new police clearence certs and have a February 2003 date. I think we will do the latter.

Australia here we come!!

That's fantastic news claire!!

Have a fantastic holiday...and don't forget to bring some Real Estate pages back with you....you'll be needing to get your head round their jargon sooner than you thought!!

love sophia x

Double Yippeeee Claire, bottle of wine is open and going down very well in celebration of your great news. Hope we won't have too much longer to wait

Susan xxx

Really well done!!
It's great to hear that someone who's been waiting so long has got there in the end, it brings us all hope. Have a great holiday.

Tracey

Hi Claire,

Thats great news, well done, you most both be over the moon, let us know how you get on in Aus.

We had our medicals last week, so hopefully not too far behind.

Chris.

Hi Claire,

That's great news. Congrats. It's really nice to know things are moving again.

Have a great holiday

Nigel db

This morning? On Easter Sunday????? Bloody hell, AHC must have a big backlog if they
are working today! Good luck anyway, Dean, Karen and Jayden.

"Claire" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > If today had been 1st April I would have been sure someone was playing a cruel
    > joke on us.
    >
    > This morning we had a call from the nice man at London Australia House advising us
    > that he can approved our PR visa. The call came out of the blue and as my husband
    > is neither in IT or a Nurse we were very shocked!! But it feels great!!
    >
    > We applied November 2000 so it has been a long wait. As we are going on holiday to
    > Perth on Wednesday he won't actually finalise our application until we return but
    > has asured us there will be no problems. We can either have the visa issued with
    > the current medicals and police clearence certificate and our first entry date will
    > be August 2002 or we can get new police clearence certs and have a February 2003
    > date. I think we will do the latter.
    >
    > Australia here we come!!
    >
    >
    >
    > --
    > Alan Pritchard
    >
    > Posted via http://britishexpats.com

Yes, this morning - Easter Sunday! I wondered if I was dreaming myself! The guy who called did say they were working overtime as they had been given "the green light to clear some of the backlog".

Claire

Congratulations.
Thats great news and no disrespect to IT and nurses, but its nice to hear of other skilled people getting a chance.

Good luck to you when you make the move.

Lynn & Vaughan

Many congratulations. Good to see things are moving in London.

Are you sure that if you want a Feb 2003 first entry date that you won't have to
re-do medicals as well as police checks? If re-doing police checks it's worth sending
off the forms before you leave the UK.

If you are going to Australia on Wednesday, it might be worth getting to Australia
House in London first thing Tuesday and seeing if they will grant and evidence your
visas on the spot. The main applicant should be there in case any 'no change in
circumstances form' needs to be completed and you should also have your passports and
documentation relating to your application with you. Not sure if this would be
guaranteed to work (although I see no reason why not), but may be worth trying.

The advantage of doing that will be that you could make first entry to Australia
almost straight away and when in Perth you could do things like apply for Medicare
cards and Tax File Numbers which will make life easier when you move to Australia
proper. You should also look at opening a bank account when you are there.

Regards

Jeremy

    >On 31 Mar 2002 17:05:03 GMT, Claire <[email protected]> wrote:

    >If today had been 1st April I would have been sure someone was playing a cruel
    >joke on us.
    >
    >This morning we had a call from the nice man at London Australia House advising us
    >that he can approved our PR visa. The call came out of the blue and as my husband is
    >neither in IT or a Nurse we were very shocked!! But it feels great!!
    >
    >We applied November 2000 so it has been a long wait. As we are going on holiday to
    >Perth on Wednesday he won't actually finalise our application until we return but
    >has asured us there will be no problems. We can either have the visa issued with the
    >current medicals and police clearence certificate and our first entry date will be
    >August 2002 or we can get new police clearence certs and have a February 2003 date.
    >I think we will do the latter.
    >
    >Australia here we come!!
    >
    >
    >
    >--
    >Alan Pritchard
    >
    >Posted via http://britishexpats.com

Hi

Thanks to everyone for your "congrats" messages.

Jeremy, the guy I spoke to at LHC was really helpful, thinking up every possible way for us to get our visas before we go on holiday on wednesday. He even phoned me back so that we had chance to try sort something out but I explained to him that the trains were all full and I couldn't drive down (we live about 5 hours away). In the end we decided that we would have to wait until we got back which is a shame as it would obviously have been better to validate them on this trip.

He never mentioned any forms that needed to be signed and said that anyone could collect the visas, it didn't even have to be us. I think I might check this out tomorrow with our agent.

Regarding the medicals, he said that these would be valid until February 2003 (21 months old) but as the police checks were valid until August 2002 (about 16 months?) these would have to be done again if we wanted the february 2003 entry date.

We're not sure what to do now as we hope to be in Oz before August anyway but if something comes up.................... we might be better just sending the police cleaeance forms off again tomorrow anyway, just in case.

Claire