Simon.and.Kate

Reading though other posts and hearing about people waiting for these got me thinking.

Is it possible to get these done too early? Am I right that they are valid for 6 months? If we're hoping to submit an application (online 176) in November when's a good time to get these ready?

Cheers,

egghead4

we waited for them to be requested. but I kind of wish we had done them a little sooner, as our agent says this is the only thing that is delaying our visa.
bec

cheekivimto07

Hi there, we had our medical and police checks done to the end of our visa application, purely because of the time the other documentation takes, and your medicals and police checks only have a short life span, which means you'd have to repay for them all doing again. If i was you i'd just wait until your instructed by your agent if you have one. Regards Cheeki

TMRE

Just sent off for our police checks as we are happy to do them again if we run out of time. Agent said to wait for medicals though.They are valid for a year (6 months for some medicals if there are health issues though I think?)

Simon.and.Kate

Everyone seems to have an agent - am I daft doing all this myself?

WS

I really wouldn't do the meds/PCC's too early, it will reduce the amount of time you will get to validate.

No you're not daft, we didn't use an agent. As long as you're organised and have a straightforward application its not difficult. Also depends on the skills assessment - a teaching assessment is far easier than TRA.

andym79

No, we have done it all so far. I don't won't to tempt fate, but so far its all gone smoothly!

I guess it comes down to how much you are willing to pay for a bit more piece of mind?

I figured that it wasn't worth the money, after all the agents don't get you extra points, and they are just middle men at the end of the day. Personally I think unless your case is complicated then they are not necessary.

As I said if it gives you piece of mind. It was the first stage, the TRA that an agent would have been more useful for than the visa application. TRA where very fussy.

All the best

brissie-here-we-come

can i say we applied on a 136 modl, back in march, did our meds at the end of april and didnt even know we had our case officer, as we had "front loaded " (sent before requested) everything and got our visa aug, we are so glad we did "frontload ", but not sure how long your type of visa is taking,

bit of advice though the thing thats held us back until now is selling the house, much more nerve racking than the visa . get the house on the market as soon as you can.


kels x

burkesdownunder

If you have no house to sell, and you have a straight forward VISA applicatoin then frontload, because once the visa is granted you will have less time to get in ie 4 to 6 months

I myself frontloaded,only to find i have problems with the application dragging the whole process out. i ended up having to have meds and pcc's done again at my expense, but in the long run has worked out ok, because i would of in the first instance had to validate my VISA with less time to sort things out ie sell the house, but now we are going for good in january.

So be wary

brissie-here-we-come

i must also add your police checks and medicals are valid for 12 months and when you recieve your visa you must enter the country by the earliset date, IE, if you have your meds done on the 1st of say jan you then have to get into the country by that date, it goes by which ever date you had your meds or police checks issued or done which ever date was first.

kels x

Simon.and.Kate

Cheers for the input guys - it's a tricky one this...

Our application should be straight forward. We're not 'rushing' to get this done as quickly as possible. The ideal plan is to arrive in Australia around Sept 2008. We both want to see out another year at work, and have commitments up until next summer (weddings etc), so Sept 2008 is ideal.

I want to get the visa application in as soon as possible (hopefully once the skills assessment comes back in 5-6 weeks). Can I check that the following is right:

- Police Checks and Meds are usually requested by a case officer after you've sent the visa ap in. Roughly what's the average timing for this?

- How does this 'front loading' work?

- Once the visa is granted, how is the date you need to enter the country by calculated? Is it 12 months after whichever you had first out of the Police Check or Med's?

So, for example: if I submit visa in November 2007, checks submitted in January 2008, and the Visa gets granted in April 2008 (all examples - know idea if that's realistic), We would have to enter Australia before January 2009?

brissie-here-we-come

hiya, like i said earlier , basically we had our meds done the 26th of april and we requested our meds 25th of april , but they didnt come back until about 36/37 days later so there for our earliest date was 26th of april and now we have visa ,we have to enter the country by the 26th of april 08 as we had them done the 26th of april 07 , this actually stated on our visa grant letter, the date we must enter by is 12 months later of the earliest check which is the 26th of april 08, hope this clears it up for you , if not PM me and i'll explain further,

kels x

Simon.and.Kate

Cheers, that confirms the entry date issue, I just wanted to check.

What about front-loading?

Basically, you're saying that you send off Med's and Police Checks before they are requested. Is this something that DIAC acknowledge as OK? Ie, is it something that once you've submitted your application they say you can do?

Giving you the option to either:
1) Submit visa application, and submit police and meds aswell (running the risk that your visa application is rejected and the police and meds were a waste of time)
2) Submit your visa app, but then wait until a case offer requests the police and meds, which basically says the visa app is ok, so now go and pay for meds and police checks...

A friend of mine is going through a similar process to move to Perth, and he suggested that once your Police & Med's are requested (providing there is nothing wrong with them) - thats a good sign that everything will be OK...


Have I got all of this right? Thanks again for everyone's help with this...

Nozzys

Hi there,

I think you are right on your second point - we used an agent and they told us to wait until meds & Police checks were requested because it basically meant that everything else was ok before we commited more financially. We were also supplied with a list of panel doctors who are able to carry out the medicals. We had to ring round quite a bit to get ours done in a few weeks, a lot of them were quoting up to approx. 6 weeks for appointments. Prices also vary from one place to another.

Don't know if you have any children but one thing we would advise is that if you have a child nearing 15 years old - go ahead and get their blood tests done also as our son was 14 at the time of medicals so didn't have the blood test done and then there was a hold up in processing the medicals and he turned 15 so we were asked to then get blood tests for him which delayed our visa grants for over a month.

Good luck with your application.

Nat x

Simon.and.Kate

Cheers, no kids yet though - that's the plan for when we get settled down-under!