Got it! Sender: Anonymous

Hello. Not sure if this is my first post or not, but it's pretty close to it.

I have been watching this forum since sometime in 2004, reading, watching, planning.

I work for a mulinational company which has offices around the world and is headquartered in the US. We have offices all over Australia, including Perth, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, and Melbourne. I had occasion to visit Australia for the first time in 2004, and I loved it. My first visit was to Melbourne, then Sydney and in my opinion Sydney it has everything like about where I live now (California USA), but none of the problems. No earthquakes, much less crime, etc, etc. So far the only two bad things I can come up with are A: High humidity in summer, and b: Very large spiders. I haaaaate them!:)

Anyway, a second trip brought me to Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne again, and of course Sydney. I fell in love with the country, but more importantly I fell in love with one of your residents.

At the time, I figured it would be really easy to just pick up and move. Boy, was I wrong about that. I first looked at a couple of online sources (liveinaustralia.com) and found that I needed to pbutt a points test (imagine that!:) and the first time I took one, I pbutted it. Unfortunately, the online one I took, gave me an extra 5 points for something I would never consider, and as soon as I found this out, hopes were dashed.

Then, I found this site, the usenet group. I have learned soooooo much since then, and everyone here has been incredibly helpful to me. I have found all the answers to every question I've ever had in this forum, and I am sincerely grateful. Even though I have not interacted, I feel like a close member of this community.

Part of the reason for not interacting, is that no one anywhere besides my family knows that I am planning on moving. I have been very careful to keep things out of the public domain, in case anyone finds out while I worked on getting a visa to move.

So, after much reading I decided to submit an application for a 136 Non MODL. I am a Network Manager, and therefore have a 60 point occupation. However, I do not have ANY post secondary education, so I was stuck...for a time. Then I found out about the MCSE and that I could get a Group B buttesment from ACS with this. I immediately signed up for a 2 week boot camp style training here in the US to go after getting this certification.

2 weeks of hard work and studying paid off. I pbutted all 7 tests I needed, and was granted the certificate. As soon as I had this paperwork done, I submitted my ACS buttesment. The buttessment was given to ACS in late May 2005, and I had my positive buttesment back in early August.

I submitted my 136 visa app to Adelaide on August 26 2005. They took the payment a week later, and about 2 weeks later I received my acknowledgement letter. I still needed an extra 5 points, so I nominated the 100000 investment as my means to gain the points.

Meanwhile, I persued a relationship with a person that is the most wonderful thing in my life. We started out with a simple connection I wanted to explore. I called her after my first trip and explained my feelings. She felt the connection too, but was uncertain about someone from another country, especially so far away. That's about the time I started looking for what it would take to move. She is a coworker, and is in the same department, so we've had to keep our relationship quiet. It's amazing to me that no one has found out yet, since we always take vacation at the exact same time:)

Over the last few years, our love has grown intensly, so I asked her to marry me.

She said yes ( I knew she would of course). We started plans to get married. I looked into the other visa options and found the prospective marriage visa. We compiled the necessary information, and submitted an application on April 5th. They took my payment and acknowledged this application on April 10th. They also requested medicals at this time. I frontloaded the application with my PCCs, so the only requested item was medicals. The ack letter contained information that suggested it would be 4-6 months of processing time.

Funny, just before this, my case officer was finally buttigned on my 136 application, and I received a letter requesting medicals, police checks, and various other information. That was just about 7 months from acknowlegement.

I booked the medicals for April 13th, and pbutted with flying colors. Meds transmitted to the Australian Embbutty in the US on April 20th. Yesterday April 26th, I received an email letter notifying me that I've gotten a pre-grant visa! They requested my pbuttport and a postage paid return envelope to send it back to me. So, while I don't actually have my pbuttport in my hands with the stamp in it, I think I'll be getting it back in the next week.

So, it took 1 month to get a prospective marriage visa in the US if you have all your I's dotted and your T's crossed.

My Fiance and I have decided to cancel the 136 Visa application and continue with the wedding and then the spouse visa. In order to proceed with the 136, I still need to send of a bunch of requested information. Some of which needs to be certified copies, and this is all but impossible in California. People who could do this sort of thing here (Notary Publics) are not authorized in California to provide certification of copies. The closest way for me to do this, is to send docs to someone in Arizona, as Notarys there are allowed to certify copies. Of course, I could take another vacation to Australia and cert copies there I guess. I figure with all that work, it would be around another 3 months before the visa would be granted, then I need to pay 100K. So, decided against it.

Now, for the hard part. Notifying my employer, and making the move.

Again, I want to thank you all for the help even though you didn't know you were providing it to me!

If anyone has any questions at all for me, please feel free to ask away! I feel like an expert on migration from the USA by now:)

-Anonymous (at least until I tell my employer May19th)

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