maco1

Hi

We are emigrating to Australia in September 2008 and have been granted a residents visa which expires in 2012. The problem is that my wife and childs passport is due to run out in May 2009.

The visa is tied to the passport therefore if we renew the passport the visa will not be valid. I have heard and looked up that you can travel with your old passport that has the visa in it and the new passport. However a friend in Oz informs me that some airlines and possibly the immagration will not accept this.

We have thought about leaving the passports until we get to Oz and then renewing and transfering the Visa to the new passport. I do know someone in Oz who is a retired accountant. Would he qualify for a proffessional person even though he has retired ?

Other than this we could renew the passports and transfer the Visa before we travel. I have been advised not to do this as the passports may get lost.

Could you please advise me on options

Thanks

Matt

JAJ

How did you come to that conclusion? The visa stamp is only evidence of the visa, not the visa itself.

maco1

Thanks Jaj for your reply.

I may have worded this wrong. I thought that the evidence of the Visa was tied to your passport number. Therefore when you get a new passport you either have to carry your old passport as evidence or get the evidence of the Visa transfered over to your new passport.

My friend in Oz told me that some airlines will not accept a visa in an old passport as evidence of the visa. Therefore I did not want to send for a new passport in the UK only to then find that we cannot use the old passport to emigrate to Oz in September. I thought it may be better to go over with our existing passports and then renew when in Oz and transfer the evidence of the visa over to the new passportnwhen needed

Matt

JAJ

That is correct. But there is a big difference between that and saying that the visa is cancelled ...


Some airline staff are clueless and hassle people at check-in for this reason. DIAC are ok with it but not airline staff understand things out of the ordinary. If they won't accept it there is a 24 hour facilty in DIAC Canberra to give them a direct ok but obviously this may take some time and people have come close to missing flights for that reason.

If you renew in Australia then you can easily transfer visas at a DIAC office in Australia.

Renewing a British passport in Australia should in theory be straightforward but you have the problem here that the British High Commission are sometimes ignorant of the fact that new arrivals in Australia can't provide a countersignature from someone local who has known them for 2 years.

All that said, straightforward passport renewals should not require countersignature and I've yet to see any real case of a passport being refused for this reason. If it was you could make a high level complaint to the Foreign Office in London as they need to have procedures in place to deal with new arrivals, especially as you are not allowed to renew via the U.K. Passport Service.