Australia Forum banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

De Facto "mandatory" waiting period

3K views 2 replies 2 participants last post by  Wanderer 
#1 ·
Date of application: 27th November 2009

Nationality: Canadian

Visa type: Partner (de facto) Visa Temporary and Permanent (Subclasses 309 and 100)

Offshore/onshore: Offshore

Medicals submitted (yes/no): No

Police check submitted (yes/no): Yes (AFP check sent 06/01/10)

Date CO assigned: 7th December 2009

Date visa granted:
This is my partner's time line so far...as we hadn't heard anything from his CO we decided it was time to call for an update today. The response we got from our CO was that because we had applied as a de facto couple, we were subject to a two month waiting period, but now that was up she would move our application into her "urgent" pile and get back to us within the next two business days to let us know if we needed to provide more evidence or if we could go ahead with the medical.

Not sure if we get to go in the urgent pile because we phoned or my partner made a point of saying my visa is up next month and I will have to head back to Aus.

Has anyone else ever heard of this??? I know a lot of people wait longer than 2 months, but it hardly seems fair to be discriminated against and made to wait longer just because we're not married. We've been together nearly 3 years now, and a de facto couple for 20 months at this point so its not like we only just meet the 12 month criteria.

Anyway thought I would pass along the heads up - especially for anyone else applying to the Canadian office here in Ottawa. We cut it tight for our application because it took so long to get our stat declarations back from Australian friends, if we had known this earlier we would have made sure we started the process a lot earlier to avoid this last minute fretting.
 
See less See more
#2 ·
Quick update - our call to our CO was at 9am this morning, we had the request for the medical at midday - so we can now tell that "relationship assessment" only takes about 3 hours!

To give an idea of what we supplied to "prove" our defacto relationship:

- Joint bank statements for ~18 months (used for pay deposits, bill payment and all day to day expenses ie. groceries, daily purchases, car repairs, home furnishings)
- Joint electricity bill for 12 months
- Cable bill in sponsor's name
- Stat decs from about 10 people (mainly family, 2 australian friends)
- Around 15-20 photos of us together in Aus and in Canada, photos with both families
- Boarding passes from a flight we took together
- Copies of passport stamps and visas to prove requirement for time apart
- Personal statements (how we met/how our relationship developed/how we dealt with time apart/how we function as a couple/plans for the future)
- Statement from sponsor about sponsorship undertaking and plans for return to Aus
- Sponsor's most recent bank statements from Aus to show financial viability
 
#3 ·
Hi Jenifer and all seems to be headed in the right direction for you.

You are the first that has posted as I recall who has mentioned being told of a two months wait time and it could be something introduced recently as just one means of throttling back on immigration numbers.

The government is conscious of a number of aspects at the moment;
. Global/Australian economic situation with still very mixed signals and what that means re employment in Australia.
. They have capped skilled immigration and that has been very substantially slowed.
. Mixed feelings in the community re projected figures of 35M by 2050
And with all that happening, there's an election on this year.

It could be that they will slow partner visas across the board and perhaps it'll not be just defacto visas, though for married people and especially where children are involved I could envisage there being more generosity whether it be discrimination or not - when it comes down to it, you could say there are a lot of discriminatory practices in immigration but a government does need to always be looking at the numbers be it politics or not.

Re the three hours relationship assessment, there is no reason why with a well documented and presented application a CO could not make a quick decision for they do with all visas apparently work on application forms on a tick box process and so as they run through an application and the information is all there, then it'll be on to the next step.

So congratulations in having an application well done.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top