JohnDeeHart

Thanks a lot, Polyanna - a really useful site.
Regards.
John & Eirian

DaveandLinda

Medical and police checks are usually only valid for a year so you may be asked to get them done again. The other thing to bear in mind is that you are normally asked to validate your visa, ie enter Australia within one year from the date of police checks or medicals, whichever is sooner, so you may not be given long to validate the visa if you have got your medicals done earlier.

mavinaus

EVIDENCING VISA

Hi everyone, I just wanted to post this important information. As previously mentioned on here, we have been applying for our 143 visa, and eventually got the ok to go offshore (we currently live in Australia on 410 visa) to evidence visa, once grant letter had been emailed to us. We were only asked when we would be leaving Australia and the return date. We had booked a cruise from Sydney going to the outh spacific, New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji for 14 days, returning to Sydney. Whilst away our CO telephoned our son to ask why we hadn't left Australia to go to Bali??? We were never going there that was her assumption. Our son explained we had left the country and were in international waters somewhere and suggested she email us. She didn't understand this and (luckily or maybe not so) went to her manager who checked our ship details. Well the upshot is that cruise ships can apply for an exemption from immigration and say it's a round cruise i.e. sydney to sydney, even though we were infact offshore and in other countries. The Manager did try to see if an exception could be made, so did the cruise admin manager but to no avail. Sooo here we are again in the situation of having to go offshore 'by plane' as we have now been advised. Apparently this is a unique situation. I did explain that absolutely no information is given out with the final letter and nothing was requested so we therefore could not have known this, and in theory did actually go offshore as requested. It is obviously a cost situation for the cruise ship company and a system issue for immigration. We were obv. off shore and could prove it but were not on their system so they will not accept that. I am annoyed it is costing yet more money, more holidays from work and extending our PR and citizenship rights and once we eventually get this sorted I will be writing to the immigration minister about it. In the meantime, please advise anyone you know who may need to go offshore to have their visas evidenced not to go on a cruise, offshore really means fly out of the country!! I suggested a fact sheet giving some information and detailing what one should and shouldn't do wouldn't go amiss. Our case worker has really not been very good overall and if they had asked more questions it may have come up earlier and we could have changed the arrangements somehow. The whole situation has been so stressfull and I will be glad when it is finalised.
Marian

miscellaneous

So sorry to hear of your plight, and do feel for you, I flew to NZ and this cost was hurtful, although expected, so I do hope that the Immigration dept may help you with some kind of recompense towards this extra expense, at least request it in your letter.

Sincerely
Elaine.

sonlymewalter

There is information regarding cruises and the legalities of going on a cruise to validate here on the DIAC site: http://www.immi.gov.au/sea/ships/cruise-ships.htm

JohnDeeHart

What email address did you use to get your mail through, John?
My mails seem to elicit a standard response saying nothing much.
Thanks
John & Eirian

Perthflyer

Hi

My mum's application was acknowledged mid Jan: not heard anything so far.

I got engaged on xmas eve and now planning to set the date of the wedding.

Obviously this will be easier if we knew a bit more of where my Mum is in the queue

Would there be any value in sending an email to the parents centre- would it be better coming from me as the sponsor or my Mum as the applicant

Thanks

Ian

DaveandLinda

Hi
The waiting time for a case officer is currently 12-14 months. I do know of someone who just got a case officer after 14 months, so it's probably a little bit early yet. Also there hasn't been much activity recently due to the Christmas period. If she hasn't heard anything by March then I would contact them. Unless your mum put on her form that they should communicate with you, then they will only deal with her.

With regard to timing, once she has a case officer it can take up to 2 months to then be granted the visa (organising medicals, police checks and the the AOS). Having said that we just waited about 10 weeks for Centrelink to sort out our AOS. It's not ideal but your mum could also come over for a visit on a visitor visa, but will then need to let her case officer know (if she has already been granted one) so they don't grant her visa while she is on shore.

cantwait

My mum/Dad applied in April and got an acknowledgment in May. Apart from that nothing yet?

jtct

check out this tracker

http://www.chireckles.com/cpv/tracker.php

you can get a rough idea of timescale for Visas already granted or in progress

cantwait

Yeh i've already had a look at that thanks, though its a bit limited not all that many people on it. but thanks anyway.

Wanderlust

Hello everyone! I haven't been on here in aaaaages! Great to see that Expats is still going strong!

I have a question for you that only folks on the contributory parent track can answer for me.....

My mum got the 173 temporary part of her visa in 2010, moved over here for a year, decided she didn't like it (too expensive and she missed her mates) and then moved back to Canada. (Expat Pom living in Canada)

Aaaaannnywayyy.... now she has decided that she prefers Australia after all and plans on coming back. All she has to do is apply for the permanent part of her visa (143 class), pay the second half of the fees, and back she comes.

Now here's the question.... I know she can apply for her 143 while she is in Canada, but do you know how much time she has to enter Australia to activate her visa once she gets it? Apparently the case officer puts a date in the letter you receive, but is it weeks, months or a year till the deadline?

Hope you can help!

Cheers!!!
P.S. And good luck!

Grayling

As far as I know she has already activated it.

We started on the 173 and then converted to the 143.....I don't remember having to validate it again. It will also be valid for 5 years.

Wanderlust

Ok, maybe 'activate' is the wrong word, but apparently when you get your visa and you're overseas, you have to enter Australia by a certain date. I was just wondering how much time they give you. Surely its not 5 years??

Grayling

I got the 143 visa in April 05 and the only wording on it was to enter before April 2010. I was in the UK at the time. I had validated the 173 visa previously.

As far as I know the 143 is an extension of the 173 and does not need validating if the 173 has already been validated