Hi All,

My girlfriend applied for an Australian spouse visa a year ago, in Bangkok. She is from Myanmar and we have been living together here in Thailand for a few years.

She has just passed the medical clearance, after a whole year (!) of waiting, so now we need to get her police clearance documents updated. This is a bit annoying, as the Embassy have had a whole year to forewarn that this may be the case, and I have been asking them what we could do to avoid precisely these kinds of delays .

When we applied for the visa we submitted both Thai and Burmese police clearances. The Thai police clearance wasn't a hassle, but the Burmese one had to be sent over from Yangon - so it took a few weeks. Today our case officer told me that she may need to get another Burmese police clearance, even though she hasn't been to Burma since coming here and applying for the Oz spouse visa.

Can anyone confirm whether or not she will actually need this (as it will just add more delays to the visa)? I proposed that the Embassy copy her passport, showing she has not been back to Myanmar since arriving, and the CO said that might be OK/ might not be OK. We also went to Malaysia last year for a few weeks, so I was wondering if she would need a police clearance from there too - or is that just going overboard?

Any advice would be appreciated ...

As it's been waaaaaaaay toooooo frigggggggin loooooooong already

update...

just got a letter from the embassy, and they said it should be fine using the old police clearance providing we sign statement declaring we haven't been back to myanmar since the original was issued.

sweet

more paper, but a lot less work and hassle

update...

just got a letter from the embassy, and they said it should be fine using the old police clearance providing we sign statement declaring we haven't been back to myanmar since the original was issued.

sweet <img src="http://static.thaivisa.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/happy.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="happy.gif" />

more paper, but a lot less work and hassle <img src="http://static.thaivisa.com/forum/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" />

Hopefully not much longer for you now. Let us know when that visa finally gets granted.

Bridge