We Got It! Sender: R.Soper

Hi There,

After all my moaning about region 4, migration agents, CO's, and just about everything else to do with migration, we got our permanant residency (send independant) visa today.

At first, on looking at the email, i thought it was a request for further information (nightmare,) but then i realized it was our grant letter - what a relief! We just have to send our pbuttports to the UK now to get the visas put in, and then we have to enter Oz by 11th November 2006, to validate our permanant residency. This is not a problem as we are holidaying there in June.

For a timeline, our application was acknowledged around the 20th September 2005 (about four weeks after having sent it.) we then got the request for medicals and police checks in mid January 2006. We completed the medicals within a fortnight, to recieve another request from the LCU shortly thereafter saying our useless panel doctor had not completed Hep B and Hep C tests (a requirment because my partner is a health worker.) We got these completed, at great expense, and the LCU recieved the results on the 3rd March. We then got our grant letter today, being the 11th April 2006.

So all in all it took around six months in total from start to finish, my partner (who is the primary applicant on our application,) is a nurse, so alledgedly we were supposed to being "fast tracked." I think if it had not been for the chicken up with our meds, we may have got the grant letter in around five months. I am confident if we had pre-loaded our meds and police checks, we could have had the grant letter in around four months.

With the benefit of heinsight, if i could have done it all again i would have applied earlier, so there was less pressure time wise. I would have also pre-loaded our meds and police checks. I think we would have recieved our grant letter around the time when we recieved our request for meds letter, if we had pre-loaded, saving us around two months.

For those who have had meds, and are waiting for their grant letter, it may be of interest that we contacted our migration lawyer last week asking them to contact DIMIA to see what is going on with our application, in an attempt to "prompt" DIMIA into action. I also stated we were concerned that something may have gone wrong with our meds. I don't think it is a co-incidence that we recieved our grant letter today, after our migration agent got in touch with them. I suspect if we had not instructed our agent to get in touch with them, we would still be waiting (i don't know for a fact, but this is my "hunch.") I imagine they must have a pile of applications at the final stage, and by getting in touch with them it draws their attention to your application, and then hopefully it will get the "rubber stamp." Also the case officer who sent us the grant letter was a different case officer to the one who sent us the request for medicals letter, don't know how this may (or may not,) have affected the speed of our application.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for all the advice and support, this forum is a great facility for all people going through what can be quite a frustrating, difficult process.

See you on the Sunshine Coast!

Cheers - Bob

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