Australian Partner Visa Success Story

[petemcc]

Seeing as I have had some helpful advice here, I thought it was timely to tell you about a recent success story whereby I got Australian Permanent Residency for my Filipino 'partner' and her children.

Background: I met her just over 4 years ago on Date in Asia, traveled to see her etc. Decision made to make things a bit more permanent, so a few more visits to see her, a meet-up in Singapore, and eventually application for a tourist visa for them all-this was all within 7 months.

She was, is still married to an English man, who abandoned her 8 years ago now, 4 years when we met, and has never paid a Peso to her or the kids since then. Unfortunately the Philippines doesn't have divorce, and before anyone comes up with some anecdotal tale of annulment, I explored the legal avenues at some length and annulment is impossible under normal circumstances unless a huge bribe is paid to a judge and everyone else. Even then it can take years.

So my first hurdle was to make sure she had custody of the kids, which meant a trip to court and a few months wait. There should then be no problem with the Australian government worrying if the children were being taken from the country without their father's consent, as on the visa application it requires both parents' signatures, unless...

Long story short, they got 2 tourist visas, both unfortunately only for 3 months. First time they stayed for 3 weeks over Christmas, second time 3 months. During that 3 months I sent the kids, then 6 and 7, to a local primary school-for a fee of course. This was part of my master plan.

I had looked at the options of getting them into Australia and initially it relied upon getting her a student visa, however 3 attempts at the IELTS meant she could not get into any course, even though she had offers. A spouse visa was of course impossible as she is married, and a partner visa required co-habitation and proof of family status basically for 12 months. Filipinos are not as far down the list of undesirables as those from the Indian sub-continent who have recently been cheating the system with fake colleges etc, but they are still down on the order, apart from one thing, primary student visas. The problem however with student visas is that the govt. makes it clear they are not a way to bypass the normal migration system and students must show they WILL return to their own country. So I decided to apply for the two girls as overseas students and their mother as a student guardian, that way all, if successful, would be living with me and we could then show we were a family. Of course proving, or demonstrating the willingness of a 6&7 year old to return to their own country after the visa expired would be difficult, so I decided to be up front, and this is the value of a covering letter. I outlined the full circumstances, everything and declared that it was my intention, should they be successful, to apply for a partner visa after a year. I pointed out that this was not some sort of devious way of perverting the system, but a way of using the legal avenues available to achieve our goal, to be a family.

With a bit of coaxing via a complaint, the visas were granted for a 5 year period. Conditions, she couldn't work, she couldn't leave the country without them, and no further applications while in Australia. That was April 2013.

June 2014 we travelled to the Philippines to lodge the offshore partner visa application. For the offshore application (which it had to be), she had to lodge it outside Australia and be outside Australia when a decision is made.

In April 2015 she received an email to say that her visa could not be considered any further while she was in Australia, thus we flew to Singapore and emailed the generic case officer for that stage of application, their Singapore entry stamps. That was a Sunday morning. Monday afternoon her email revealed not only had the visas been granted, but they had by-passed the usual 2 year 'probationary' temporary residency status and granted full residence. Research showed that this was possible if there were 'children in the relationship', which effectively there were, as they had been treating me like their father for 4 years.

So success, PR visa for my Filipino, who by the way had no job when we applied (lost it after the 3 month stay) and no money. I sent money to support them, which was good evidence.

Now the whole thing was not without dramas, dealing with anything in the Philippines, especially from outside the Philippines is a nightmare. It also cost me a lot of money, with overseas student fees for the girls, visa fees, medical insurances etc, around $40,000, but well worth it.

Four days after arriving back in Australia she attended a walk-in interview and 2 days later started a job and she is contributing fully to the household expenses and paid for half of the trip to Sydney for the UK visas.

I am not saying the process was easy, my file of evidence contained over 30 documents as well as email headings of 3 years of emails, family photos (we went to Thailand and Singapore), and of course that covering letter.

It has been said many times, if you give them what they need to assess an application, you should be successful.

Now she has a friend who married an Australian in the Philippines and is here on a bridging visa while their marriage visa is being sorted out. You would think already being legally married it would be a formality, as well as being an onshore application. Well, we applied at the same time and they are still waiting, and getting requests for more evidence, etc, so it really is about what you submit.

I hope this shows people that possibly against-the-odds visa applications can be successful if you just do them right!

Cheers

Pete