Hello all!

What happens every year at around February is that those clients who had applied for visas the previous year start worrying about their applications. A new year is a mental milestone, which means you can now say “It was lodged last year”, and this can make things appear worse than they actually are. 

Partner visa applications have generally taken an average of 6 months to process. I would say that in the last 6 to 9 months this has probably extended to around 8 months…..average! “Average” does not mean “It will take 6 months”, or “It will take 8 months”. It means that this is how long most of them take when you average out the time all applications can take. It might take 3 months. It might take 11 months.

• It is NOT a sign of a problem.

• It is NOT a sign that you need to start worrying.

• There is NOTHING we can say or do that will either:

(a) Speed the process up, or;

(b) Get you information that will stop you worrying. I have nothing comforting to add! But please don’t ever think we don’t understand!

There is only one person who can stop you worrying. That person is you!

We……ie. the Down Under Visa team, plus you and your spouse….put a LOT of effort into producing a great application. If it was not a great application, we would not have submitted it. Remember the hard time we gave you when things weren’t perfect? THIS was what made it a great application!

Why is it taking time? Because the Embassy are busy. That’s why. They’re not sitting about saying “How can I tell this person that we want to refuse them? Gosh, they’ll be so disappointed! Let’s put it off for a while….”. They’re just busy.

So stop worrying! Get on with your lives. It will happen! One day soon we’ll be giving you the good news, and we’re looking forward to it!