Love and lust in the department of foreign affairs

Kika says:

09:28am | 21/02/12

Like!!

I’ve noticed how her posts are always about how she isn’t attactive anymore, or men don’t wolf whistle at her anymore… and now she’s reminiscing about an ex. Geez… mid life crisis.

Mark G says:

07:46am | 21/02/12

Robin,

That’s not that adventurous. I know Queenslanders are a little weird at times but they are not exactly foreigners. I guess it takes a Tasmanian to think that marrying a Queenslander is like an interracial marriage

Freddo says:

08:53am | 21/02/12

I’m a Sandgroper married to a Victorian and am in deep shit

Rose says:

02:45pm | 21/02/12

My brother married a Queenslander, we eventually forgave him…..

A Dose of Reality says:

08:24am | 21/02/12

Forget what your friends suggest.  I CAN GUARANTEE THEY HAVE NO IDEA!  Also do not leave it to what the Department tell you - you only have the ‘one shot’ at the applications (it’s a 2 in one deal).

Go to http://www.mara.com.au (it’s a Government regulatory website) and find a Registered Migration Agent near you.

The result will be that you pay a couple of thousand extra - but you will not have any of the frustration that you are looking at now - and the application will be done properly.

Partner visas are simple if you know what you are doing - but a nightmare if you don’t.

BhangraSchmangra says:

09:13am | 21/02/12

Good for you! Good luck.

Unlike Amy who was probably not cultured enough to adopt some Italian culture thanks to her country Victorian upbringing (and thus remained non-Italian marriage material) being able to appreciate each other’s culture and identity is crucial. If you don’t, one of you will end up miserable and will feel like a sell out in the end.

My husband’s brother is in a mixed marriage. Wife believes she has all the cultural capital because she’s white and Christian and he’s brown and hindu. Whilst she eats curries with her hands and pretends to like them she hates garlic, hates chili, has not allowed their children to even have his surname let alone to know anything about their father’s culture or family… it’s really sad. They didn’t even know what ‘Bengali’ meant. I don’t know how he does it.

bella starkey says:

10:40am | 21/02/12

@ A Dose of Reality

I know! I have friends who have only just been given a case worker almost a year after applying. It’s a nightmare.

The only person I know that it has gone smoothly for was my sister’s husband. they applied in his home country and it was all done in 6 weeks, despite the fact that he had overstayed his visa here for a phenominal amount of time before they married.

I’m not looking forward to it but it beats what they put you through to emmigrate the other way!

A Dose of Reality says:

11:34am | 21/02/12

Bella Starkey,

That more or less proves my point - it is usually an ‘easier’ process if the applications are lodged here in Australia (not to mention the avenues of appeal to the MRT).  The reasons are many and I won’t go into it here.

Remember that your other half’s situation WILL BE DIFFERENT to your brother-in-laws’ - regardless of whether it SEEMS to be the same.

I come across this too often (I am a RMA), people ‘copy’ the application that worked for someone else - only to THEN realise that small differences can have large consequences, not to mention that immigration Law is changed often, and Department policy even more so.  The result is normally an appeal to the MRT and then to the Federal Court, OR simply returning to the old country and starting again (with an unfortunate red mark against the file).

Get an RMA to assist, you will then need only supply documents and a little information and sleep well!. 

Important hints;

Many lawyers will also - and are permitted to - assist in migration applications, be wary as very few actually keep up to date, or practice regularly in this field.  Some are VERY good, many are almost a hindrance. 

Also steer clear of your partner’s nationals who have ‘set themselves up’ as unregistered agents - taking advantage of their countryman’s preference to deal with someone who ‘speaks their own language’ - you might as well pass money to a stranger on the street as you pass them.

Gregg says:

02:01pm | 21/02/12

@bella,
There’s a little bit of bullshit being deposited here and less a dose of reality.
For one, whilst using a registered agent can be of some help to those unable to work through the immigration regulations them selves, agents can no way change the regulations nor the qualifying requirements and it can in some ways be more difficult in getting a partner visa onshore.

Go to http://www.immi.gov.au/migrants/family/visa-options.htm and have a good read, especially of the eligibility criteria and you will see that someone having followed you to Australia will not necessarily see him qualified.
Even if you marry before he applies, that will still not necessarily see him qualify and there is a twelve month relationship requirement with some rather detailed evidence needed to support an application.

In some cases and especially if you feel marriage may be an outcome it may be far better for your fella to apply for a prospective marriage visa back in his country which obviously means he has to return there and then if a visa is granted, you have nine months from when he again enters to marry and apply for the partner visa.

Otherwise it is a case of having the twelve months relationship proof and that is essentially having been a couple for at least twelve months and the evidence of cohabitation.

If you do not have that, forget an application for it’ll be lost money and yes, onshore partner visas can also take longer than offshore partner visas, that possibly just something to do with department workload, asylum seekers not helping and allocation/turnover of staff.

I see in Dose’s second post, being an RMA is declared, nothing like promoting your industry on the punch eh! , but Bella, just go and have a good read of the site relevant info and see if your fella and your relationship will match up to requirements and do not attempt setting yourself up for a fall.

marley says:

02:50pm | 21/02/12

@BellaStarkey - I went through the process a few years ago, and didn’t find it difficult at all.  Mind you, I’d been married to my Aussie spouse for some years (we’d been living abroad) so that doubtless made it easier than would be the case for a relationship with less “history” to it.

Anyway, my sponsor had no problem with providing the documentation necessary to do the sponsorship.  The instructions are pretty clear.  For my part, it took me a while to get all my papers together (especially the foreign police certificates) but I’m perfectly capable of getting documents certified and filling out an application form without paying anyone to do it for me.

Basically, just remember what they’re looking for:  in your case, identity and proof you can support the guy;  in his case, identity and character.  And for both of you, the legitimacy of the relationship - evidence that you are a genuine couple.  If you don’t meet their timelines for the length of the relationship, if you don’t have documentary evidence that you’ve at least partially merged your lives, then forget it.  No agent is going to be able to make you eligible.  And if you do have the evidence, then I don’t think you should really need an agent. 

I would say that I didn’t actually submit the application until I had every damn document I could think of, plus some.  That was tedious, but there was no subsequent back and forth about missing documents:  it was straight on to an interview, a medical and a visa.  This was a few years ago, but from the time I submitted the application to the time I got my visa was a matter of a few weeks.

So, I’d say, whether you use an agent or not is entirely up to you.  I sure didn’t need one.  But then, I’ve been a bureaucrat myself so I know the mindset

bella starkey says:

04:12pm | 21/02/12

Cheers everyone, I’m pretty sure I have it under control though.

Not intending on getting married but have got a civil partnership (or whatever they like to call it) from the registry office.

I don’t think a migration agent is really relevant to us. I think if you have trouble reading/writing/speaking english it would be helpful but I think even the American will cope.

I am reasonably certain the reason my sister was so successful was that she basically rang and badgered the immigration office into going through the application with her step by step until they probably gave up and just approved it to stop her from calling them. She is incredibly annoying, i think that helps.

marley says:

05:53pm | 21/02/12

@bella - undoubtedly, being annoying helps.  But also, giving the guy making the decision everything in one go, so he doesn’t need to look at the file more than once, helps even more.  No bureaucrat wants to spend more time making a decision than he has to.  Trust me on this:  I know.  A clean file with all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed, is a bureaucrat’s dream.  Stamp, approved, next.

A Dose of Reality says:

11:30am | 22/02/12

Gregg:

I stand by my comments.  I did not promote myself (there is no way to deduce who I am from my posts on this website, obviously).

Your post included SOME pertinent points however it was woefully inadequate, (and in other points actually very incorrect) to pretend you can cover these visas requirements in a post such as this is ridiculous - you simply can’t.  If you’d ever seen the Act or the regulations (as opposed to the Department website blurb) you’d realise that.  Department policy is also rather voluminous.

The Law also changes quite often. There is a publishing of a new ‘stack’ (collection of Act, Regulations, Policy and Ministerial Directions) every month or so, as an average.  There are also interpretational rulings from the Tribunals and, of course, the Courts).

It’s quite easy to spout off on something you have no vested interest in, eh?  What else are you an ‘expert’ in?  Taxidermy?

In no way did I imply that an Agent can “change the regulations” or “the qualifying requirements”.  For an Agent to make that claim is to be de-registered.

You might also like to know that as an agent I am RESPONSIBLE for every application I lodge (I can be de-registered if I lodge failed applications) - quite different from the unregistered hacks I warned of in my earlier post.  I can also be held accountable for advice given - quite different from yourself as well.

Your post/advice is of the type that generates clients for RMA’s (of the type we don’t really want - almost irretrievable mistakes). 

I say again, Partner visas are simple if you know what you are doing - a nightmare if you don’t.

For that matter I did not say that an agent MUST lodge - one visit may assure you that you DO know what you are doing (rather than guessing by having conversations with other people who also probably don’t).

Bella - for the record, under the Australian Marriage Act a ‘Civil Partnership’ performed ‘at the Registry’ counts as marriage (as long as it is recognised as such by the state/country in which it was performed in).

As to your sister ‘being annoying’ as ‘helping’ - it was not.  The case officers are human, and react the same as anyone else! (you annoy me and I’ll annoy you!).

Marley has it right - ” A clean file with all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed, is a bureaucrat’s dream”.

These are the applications that get done quickly.

Kika says:

09:24am | 21/02/12

Not true. My husband’s brother has sold himself out to marry his white wife.  His kids don’t even know anything about his culture of family and weren’t even allowed to keep his surname. He CHANGED his surname to HER surname as well.

Sounds like someone is bitter and twisted about not feeling accepted by their wife’s family. Same for my brother in law. It’s very frosty between him and his father in law, and they have been married for 20 years.

Who cares. As long as you and your wife love each other, shouldn’t that be all that matters? It should be about compromise and finding a happy medium.

Plus if her parents are old it’s a bit hard to expect them to drop their identity just because. If you were an Aussie expat living in China would you automatically become Chinese? Especially if you lived with other Aussies and continued Aussie culture over there, like BBQs and drinking beer.

A Dose of Reality says:

10:10am | 21/02/12

I would say that’s from one extreme to the other.

As I posted “this does not mean ‘give up their culture’ - it simply means that they need to recognise that they are the ones who do things differently, and in social (or any other) settings they need to recognise that most people are not going to conform to their expectations, values or customs”.  Obviously your brother in law went too far.

As for feeing ‘bitter’, interesting thought (that you interpret it in that manner, perhaps your brother in law’s experience has coloured your thought?).

I would say disappointing.  After 10 years I do not know them and they do not know me.  In a practical sense - they project expectations on my children that are not appropriate.

You state “It should be about compromise and finding a happy medium.” - I could not agree more.  However where two different sets of values are concerning the same issue, surely the prevailing culture is the one that is adhered to (for example, my children are living in Australia, values derived from Greece 60 years ago are different to the reality they will live in here - it is about them, not 2 of their grandparents).

And nowhere did I demand they “give up their identity”, it is offensive for you to imply that I did!

Yes her parents are ‘old’ - but they came here as teenagers 60 years ago.

As for the “if I was an expat in China” - no, I would not ‘automatically’ become ‘Chinese’ - but if I settled there, with the intent to stay and have my children there and raise them there, obviously it would be to their benefit if I tried to raise them as best as I could in the prevailing (Chinese) culture/society.  They’d still know what it was to be Aussie (and have the citizenship) but their future is more important than my past - is it not?  China is not going to ‘Aussify’ itself, so I would need to ‘Chinafy’ myself - common sense.

Race and Nationality and ‘identity’ are often confused - unfortunately so.

Gymmer says:

10:19am | 21/02/12

I don’t think he is asking his in-laws to drop their identity or culture, just accept that he is from a different culture and doesn’t speak Greek…

marley says:

03:24pm | 21/02/12

@Dose of Reality - the funny thing is, if you in-laws went back and tried to live in Greece, they’d probably have trouble fitting in.  The Greece of 2012 bears precious little resemblance to the Greece of 1952.  I know a few Indians living in India who have relatives in Canada - and they cannot believe how socially conservative and backward their Canadian relatives are.  Both Canada and India have changed in the last 30 years but the relatives are still stuck in the time warp of the day the emigrated.

A Dose of Reality says:

10:42am | 22/02/12

You’re exactly right!  And they have admitted as much (although putting it differently - “this is our home now, it’s where our kids are”).

A long talk to a number of those born here (but raised to think of themselves as Greeks) reveals that when they do go to the old country, the locals think of them as tourists (or specifically, Americans - it depends on how they speak Greek - My in-laws came from a small village and are ‘uneducated’, so the Greek they taught their children is fluent, but simple. My sister in law studied it in Uni, so her Greek is more educated but with a confused ‘accent’ or ‘manner’, so they think she’s American!).

SimonFromLakemba says:

09:32am | 21/02/12

From Wiki

“In 2009 there were 120,118 marriages recorded in Australia. About 42% involved at least one partner who was not Australian born”

From memory Australia has one of the highest rates of interracial marriages in the world and I can guess it’s only going to get higher.

Tim says:

09:35am | 21/02/12

Wow Kika,
you have some serious issues I think you need to deal with.

The author doesn’t really seem to have a problem with mixed marriages but you obviously do.
Why so touchy?

sunny says:

10:35am | 21/02/12

Geez @Kika ease up a bit. It’s not like it’s some fundamental choice between white and Wong

..and besides, all marriages are cross-cultural anyway (Mars/Venus).

Paul says:

12:20pm | 21/02/12

@ SimonFromLakemba: That is an interesting statistic indeed. I was married to a woman from South America, didn’t work out but that’s life.

The reason I find the statistic interesting is that the MSM and Governments would have us Aussies believe we are all racist. It appears the statistics and the comments here demonstrate the opposite.

Kika says:

12:57pm | 21/02/12

I’m not touchy about it. She is. She’s the one who said “Maybe to confound this situation further by marrying across cultures was asking for trouble”

She also said “perhaps the local oxen are an easier option”

So basically she’s saying in a soft way that marriage between your own kind is easier. No… it’s not.

She’s the one with the issue about cross cultural marriages as she’s the one who’s written this post in the first place.

She’s the one always banging on these threads about how she’s not desirable anymore and how she’s getting over the hill. Reminisc

Tim says:

02:06pm | 21/02/12

Kika,
do you honestly think that marriages within cultures are not easier than marriages between different cultures?

Cross cultural marriages add a layer of difficulty that isn’t there for marriages within one culture.
Does this mean that cross cultural marriages can’t work? Of course not.

Oh and speaking of banging on about stuff, you married a Sri Lankan. We get it.

SimonFromLakemba says:

02:13pm | 21/02/12

@Paul

I don’t think we are racist as a whole, it’s just the minority that make the biggest noise unfortunately.

The last 40 years mainly we saw a lot of immigration, so this is really our 1st generation of immigration, in the next 40 years it should get a lot better and more people embrace it.

A Dose of Reality says:

11:09am | 21/02/12

Year of the Dragon …..

“Putitng aside that fact that he eventually did get a wife from a different land”

An amusing aside.  Sardinia is an island between France and Italy, it is just below the island of Corsica, which is part of France.  Sardenia, of course, is (albeit autonomous) part of Italy!

year of the dragon says:

11:30am | 21/02/12

A Dose of Reality says: 12:09pm | 21/02/12

Yes it is.