Well, Estee and I sent of the Application for a de Facto Visa for Estee to enter Australia. We, or should I say Estee, have been preparing the documents for the application for a few months now. We have had to collect information about our commitment to each other and prove that we have been living with each other in a loving relationship – which it is.
It has been rather stressful for Estee as she has been gathering all the stuff that she needs not only from here in the UK, but also from South Africa. This has meant asking her family to gather information from the local authorities such as police clearances and her birth certificate. We could arrange that from here in the UK for a nice price though and we did do this for the police clearance but it is still a long slow process to get this information.
The biggest pain was the need to have a large percentage of the documents certified by a solicitor or a Justice of the Peace. Now, in Australia, it isn’t too hard, you simply go to the JP – I knew a few so that wouldn’t be an issue and they sign away for you – FREE. Here in the UK, they want to charge you 5GBP per page. Now, we had at least 50 pages to be certified so that was going to be extremely expensive on top of copying the whole file (in excess of 200 pages) and then posting it (100GBP*) to the Immigration Agents to asses, clean up and submit to the Department of Immigration in London. Eventually, we discovered that we could go to the local court and they would certify the documents for free. Now, I don’t mind paying for documents to be certified within reason, but come on, 5GBP per page – a joke!
But anyway, it is all sent off now. Estee will have to go for a medical in the coming weeks and then with any luck we will have to buy a ticket for Estee – one way. Let us hope that it is soon.
* – We had to send the package to Australia as the Immigration agent we are using is located there although our contact is in the UK. It is just the way it works as the Agent who assesses it for us and submits the proposal has to be registered with DIMA.
