Getting the Visa

I occurred to me while chatting to someone about my forthcoming move that I'd rather glossed over the visa process in my first blog entry. So I though I'd do a quick entry on what I had to do and the rough costs and timescales involved.

Initially we were going to do everything ourselves. However, after my wife had a conversation with someone who said that it had taken her over three years to get a spouse visa, we decided to find an agency to help us.

We visited the Toast Australia festival and met Dianne Perry of Advantage Migration. She gave us some useful information and when the time came to start the visa process we contacted her. 

She made sure that we had the latest forms to fill in and was there for us to answer questions when we weren't sure what to write. She also made sure that we supplied the correct documentation and checked everything that we sent before she sent them onto the Australian Immigration department.

Of course, this all costs money. Advantage Migration charge A$3000 for their services and the visa was about A$1500. On top of this was £10 for a police certificate that shows your criminal record (or lack of) and £250 for a medical.

We also had to get character references - preferably from Australians - saying what a fine fellow I was and show evidence that my wife and I had been together for a good while (bank statements, mortgage statements, insurances etc). 

One of the most surprising questions was that I had to supply a list of every time I had left the country in the last ten years. As I travel quite a bit with my job, that wasn't an easy task. However, with passport stamps, work invoices and, believe it or not, digital photo timestamps I managed to work out pretty much all of my trips - there were over fifty of them!

I applied for the visa around February/March time and I went for my medical in May. I finally heard in July that my visa had been granted and I have until May 2009 to validate it.