Hi, having a bit of a freak out and hoping someone is able to help.

I am an Englishman living in Australia on a 461 visa thru marraige to a Kiwi. I have been living here on this visa since mid 2006. The visa granted was for 5 years so i am now looking into renewing it for another 5 years.

In Jan 2006 i was found in possession of a very small amount of cannabis and received a caution (which thinking about it now seems strange, considering it was a first offence, i would have thought i would have just got a warning).

I applied for my visa a couple months later and my police check came back clean. Now i am filling out forms for the renewal of the visa and i have to get another police check for the UK even though i've only been back for a total of 1 month in close to 5 years. I've noticed that the police check seems to have changed in that the first one did not ask me if i had ever received a caution, but now that question is in there.

Obviously i'm not going to lie and i will give details of it, my question is will this affect my new application. I'm guessing the first one only looked for convictions, but this one seems to be saying it will disclose cautions as well.

I'm hoping it wont because i'd already been granted a 5 year visa previously and this all happened before i originally arrived in Australia in 2006. Also i thought perhaps cautions were not disclosed after 5 years (maybe completely wrong here), as well as the fact i've not been in any trouble in Australia since being here.

It would seem a little odd i think if i was denied a visa based on this caution when i'd already been approved one previously!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Oli and welcome to B.E.

It's my pleasant duty to welcome you to the forum and give you a point of contact should you need any help with the site in general. You can contact me here.

A list of all the moderators and helpers with their relevant countries including Australia can be found here.

Any problems, dont hesitate to PM me.

I'll be back in a mo with some info re cautions etc.

Alistair.

This subject comes up quite often. I spent the last five years of my police service working with PNC. I'm now retired, thank the lord.

There are several points here. One, PNC doesn't always get it right. It is a computer and the information is fed in by humans.

Most important is this. If you don't disclose (I know you are going to) the offence of making a false declaration is WAY more serious than that which you have recorded against you.

I can't categorically state that the disclosure won't have a negative affect on you application but I doubt it. You perhaps should seek assistance from an immigration agent. It doesn't have to be expensive.

The chances are that your new police check will also come back as "No trace" as the caution (if it ever was put on PNC) has probably been weeded by now.

However, still disclose it, as there will be a record somewhere. The inconvenience to you may be that you may be asked to contact the police station where the caution was given in order to produce the record of the details.

It is still possible that there will be no record of it anywhere anymore, other than perhaps the custody record, unless this was an instant caution in the street? They do happen.

P.S. Even if the cautions aren't disclosed after 5 years, as you had one, you are still required to disclose, and will be, in these types of situations, for ever more unfortunately.

Hi Alistair

thanks for the swift response. A couple of things to add. I know that it is still on the PNC computer for sure.

Secondly, i'm quite worried about having to disclose the details of the caution (which i know i will have to regardless, if asked) because it may look negatively on me. Basically its a situation of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I had a flatmate who unbeknowst to me was involved in distribution of drugs. The apartment we were living in was raided by the police one night when i was at home with some of my friends (my flatmate was not at home). Obviously they searched all of us and found the very small amount on my person and gave me a caution then and there in my own house and then left. My flatmate was arrested at a later date and ended up being sent to prison.

The situation was in no way whatsoever to do with me, i just had very bad luck in choosing flatmates!

So you can see i'm quite worried about being judged negatively for the actions of someone else

On that basis, I would seek some help before proceeding with submitting your application.

If you are limited with the time you can spend on the application, or if you have complicated circumstances such as child custody, medical or police conviction issues, previous refusals......all that kind of thing, then definitely an agent can help put things forward in the right way.

Also, remember most agents will also do a partial service, they will check an application before submission, or just help with a skills assessment, much cheaper than the full price, if you are just unsure on a few things.

Main thing to ensure is that whoever you use is registered with MARA, and if you search the forum for MARA agents you will find several of them post on here - including (in a totally random order!)

Alan Collett, George Lombard, and Stephen Dickson.

There are also many others though, Ian Harrop is a company often recommended, and Peter Bollard is acknowledged as a specialist in medical issues.

Hope this helps,

A.

thanks Alistair. I already have an agent dealing with the application for me. Its the same agent/lawyer i used back in 2006.

I'll have a word on Monday and see what they say.

Thanks for the advice

A caution is an expedited form of police administered justice, whereby you give a guilty plea and in return avoid a prison sentence. You do need to understand that - if you had wanted to contest the charge you could have denied the offence, then you would not have been offered a caution and instead the police would have had to bring charges and prove their case in court.

You've already omitted it from your visa application once, and at least once from the landing card which asks about convictions. You're likely going to need to develop a case which explains that a caution is not a criminal conviction (although is increasingly being treated as such) and you also need to establish whether the forms you already signed contained questions with a wider scope than just convictions.

You absolutely need professional assistance before taking this any further. Make sure the agent you choose has a lot of experience with character issues, as many/most agents don't.