Hi all
Contributory Parent visas seem to be moving again afer what seemed to be a virtual halt with them in May & June.
I am aware of 4 grants recently on 13,15,19 & 20 September. My Mum's was granted on 15 September and her pbuttport was returned yesterday with the visa label in it. All four are CP 143 visas, which is the immediately permanent one.
It is possible to get these visas within about 8-9 months but to do it that quickly you have to judge the timing carefully, anticipate what is going to be needed and "semi-frontload" it all. I wouldn't recommend total frontloading in advance of making the application. I reckon that that is yesterday's strategy because the time-scale for these visas is getting longer.
Mum's visa took 9.5 months in total. We could have shaved a month off that if we had not got it wrong with her Australian Federal Police clearance. My sister thought she would be able to get that over the counter at the main cop shop in Perth. I didn't double-check this idea. It turned out not to be possible, and it took a month to obtain the AFP clearance after the CO asked for it in July. During which time, nothing else happened which was very frustrating and the more so since we learned later that there was no reason why the butturance of Support could not have been dealt with whilst waiting for the AFP clearance to come back.
To do it fast, either the applicant or their Agent (or the applicant's children) have to be very pro-active about dealing with the various steps in advance of requests to complete them. One also has to be willing to push Centrelink hard once they get involved because they will dawdle and foot-drag if they get half a chance. However the POPC are very efficient and very helpful indeed. Really nice people who are well & truly switched on to the idea of not keeping Parents hanging around unnececessarily.
Cheers
Gill
