Graham Bell

I wonder if anyone can help with our situation. We would especially welcome advice
from George Lombard.

We are applying for a class 138 Visa (Australian Skilled)for myself and my wife. We
both have children living with our ex partners who are not included in our
application.

Australia house in London have just written to ask us to complete medical forms for
our children under 18 and Character checks for our children over
16. This is going to be virtually impossible for us as unfortunately we do not have
contact with our children and even if we did our ex partners would not cooperate.

We spoke to a Migration agent some time ago about this (before sending in our
application) and he led us to believe that we would not have to provide Medicals and
Character checks for our children as long as we made a Statutory declaration to the
effect that if anything happened to the parent that our children are currently living
with then we could not expect our children to be able to automatically join us in
Australia. (We sent a declaration to this effect with our application).

We don't want our application to end here. Please help!!

From Graham.

George Lombard

Hi Graham,

    >I wonder if anyone can help with our situation. We would especially welcome advice
    >from George Lombard.

Yes, you might welcome it, but when are any of you going to give a bottle of scotch
for the free advice? Duty free single malt quite welcome.

Unfortunately, Australia House is quite entitled to ask for medicals for any member
of the family whether migrating with you or not. You will need to prove to the High
Commission that those kids are no longer part of your families. I assume there are
divorce and custody documents.

Best to contact team 1 and put the situation to them. Most likely they just didn't
read the supporting documents fully.

And which migration agent did you speak to earlier? I hope it wasn't me

Cheers

George Lombard

www.austimmigration.com.au

grahambell16

Just to update on this situation. We were initially refused a class 138
visa as we couldn't obtain medicals for our children who didn't live
with us. However we appealed to the MRT (migration review tribunal) and
had the decision overturned and finally got our visa in November 2004
(3 years and 4 months after lodging our original application!!! is this
a record?)
Graham Bell


Graham Bell wrote:
    > I wonder if anyone can help with our situation. We would especially
welcome
    > advice from George Lombard.
    > We are applying for a class 138 Visa (Australian Skilled)for myself
and my
    > wife. We both have children living with our ex partners who are not
included
    > in our application.
    > Australia house in London have just written to ask us to complete
medical
    > forms for our children under 18 and Character checks for our children
over
    > 16. This is going to be virtually impossible for us as unfortunately
we do
    > not have contact with our children and even if we did our ex partners
would
    > not cooperate.
    > We spoke to a Migration agent some time ago about this (before
sending in
    > our application) and he led us to believe that we would not have to
provide
    > Medicals and Character checks for our children as long as we made a
    > Statutory declaration to the effect that if anything happened to the
parent
    > that our children are currently living with then we could not expect
our
    > children to be able to automatically join us in Australia. (We sent a
    > declaration to this effect with our application).
    > We don't want our application to end here. Please help!!
    >
    > From Graham.

JAJ

Congratulations. When was the decision handed down?

This shows the importance of getting professional advice from the start on this subject. DIMIA does have specific internal policies (where this request should be waived if it's 'unreasonable') but they need to be applied carefully and using a good migration agent should reduce the risk of a refusal by an overly-zealous case officer.

Sponsored applicants can appeal via their sponsor to the MRT as you did but independent applicants cannot.

It's unusual for a case to take as long as yours but some cases do take longer - eg one 136 case granted through Cairo took 206 weeks.

Jeremy