To Down Under Visa clients, both recent visa applicants and especially those who’ve been waiting a long time for their visas.

We understand completely how stressful and worrying the visa application process is. The very fact that you are applying for a visa which COULD be refused, if you didn’t worry then it would be a sign that you didn’t care about the outcome.

I put up a BLOG post the other day called “Mistakes in your visa application…”, where I pointed out that sometimes clients lash out at us as the bearers of news they did not want to hear, and that this can wear us down (and does!). And one of our former partner visa clients, Steve, wrote a very nice and honest comment. I’m assuming that most of you would not have read the comment, so (with Steve’s kind permission and encouragement) I thought I would post it up here for two reasons:

1. It should give comfort and hope to those who are feeling there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Steve and his partner Bengie thought the same, and now the waiting is over and they are together in Australia.
2. It also shows that we DO know what we are doing, and if we are tough and apparently inflexible then we have good reasons for this. This particular application was a de facto partner visa, which requires more evidence than most partner visas. If we were not tough, then maybe it would have been refused?

Please read, and I hope it strikes a chord or two.

Well said and to your readers, correct. We like other applicants were scrutinised by Jeff and his ever efficient team, (too efficient at times we thought, haha, we see the reasons for that now) many mistakes were picked up and corrected by Jeff, some were our stuff ups, some bureaucratic and some oversights. This is a long and frustrating process but one we had to endure to be together.

We first contacted Jeff in early July 2013 and went through 3 months of paper work for all the reasons pointed out by Jeff above, submitted partnership and tourist visa, within 2 weeks we had tourist visa and processing of partnership visa underway, about 11 months later we got the partnership visa through. (well done to the Downunder team)

We had our frustrations as Jeff knows, some times he and his team were the meat in the sandwich and bore the brunt of our frustrations and concerns, sorry guys.

At the end of the day they delivered, that’s why we consulted them, a bloody minefield to get through yourself. I, out of interest counted our emails,,,,,,,back and forward, 180, wow, questions asked and questions answered. Jeff has made us realise that accuracy is the key, ie, CFO, I told my better half to take every thing, all our doc’s. He did, 25 sat the course and only 6 got their sticker to leave the Philippines. The other 19 didn’t bring all their documents.

BTW, you have to book to do your CFO in Manila, we found out the hard way, scrutinise their site properly, pay no attention to “First come first serve” unless your partner living in a foreign country is a Filipino, read and beware.

To Jeff, Mila, Jeremy and the rest of your team, a big thank you, we got there.

Many thanks to Steve and Bengie! And to those who are still waiting? Hang in there! It will happen!