Photos and Forms

Yesterday afternoon I started filling in my form, and came up with the following list of things that Zoe needs to send me:

• certified copy of her birth cirtificate.
• certified copy of her Passport
• full names & dates of birth of all of her immediate family. (Not sure why, but it's on my form that I need to fill in. I know that her Mum's middle name is Edna, but I can't remember the exact dates of everyone's birthdays.)
  
• 2 passport-sized photos.
• A separate written statement/stat dec, detailing "the history of our relationship (for example, when and how you first met, when you started living together, joint activities, significant events in the relationship etc)".
  
• Print-outs of any emails, and copies of your parents phone bills where there are calls to me, to prove we've stayed in touch and all that.
• Print-outs of booking confirmations when we've booked to gone away for weekends together etc

This afternoon I wandered down and got the passport photos I need to provide when I submit the application done. And now I'm worried that I might be showing just a little bit too much tooth for it to be permissable as a Visa photo. But then a certain person takes the piss out of me for not showing my teeth when I smile...

Oh, and I emailed the Australian Immigration lot the other day, and the latest is that the application processing time could take anything between 3 and 12 weeks. I reckon our application will tend towards the lower end of that range, what with us already having had the equivilent Visa over here, but it'll be a case of waiting to see what they say until we get the form in.

Visas, Forms and Documentation, Part 1

The Visa I'm going to be applying for is the snappily-named Spouse Visa: Offshore Temporary and Permanent (or Subclass 309 and 100 to its friends.) The blurb says:

This visa allows you to enter or remain in Australia on the basis of your married or de-facto relationship with your partner:

• on a temporary visa (usually for a waiting period of approximately two (2) years from the date you applied for the visa)
• on a permanent visa if, after the waiting period (if applicable), your partner relationship still exists and you are still eligible for this visa.

It costs AU$1340, or about £550. I have a big form to fill in, so does Zoe, and there's a whole load of other criteria which I'll probably talk about individually as I come to them. For now, I have a print-out of the forms which I keep reading and re-reading, waiting for Zoe to fill in her form and send it over by post. I'm impatient. Now that this is all starting to happen, I want to happen yesterday.

One of the things we know we definitely need are testimonies from two Australian citizens who aren't related to either of us, detailing the "social context" of our relationship. We didn't have to do that for Zoe's equivalent visa in the UK, but then we had to provide two years worth of paperwork compared to the one years worth we need this time. For these testmonies I will be eternally greatful to Vic and Anna.