My URGENT Application!

Added by John Bell on July 22, 2014
Saved under Articles by Migration Agents

Unless you are an Australian citizen, you must have a Visa to enter Australia!

So you’ve just realised that you have no Visa arranged for your trip. You have left your Visa to the last minute and now you are panicking that you are going to have to change or cancel your flights, hotel bookings and other plans. You are also probably considering that you have arranged a particular leave period at work, too. What a disaster! Unfortunately, this is a very common problem.

Can your Visa be arranged urgently?

There is no single answer to this. In some cases, we can get your Visa finalised within minutes. In other cases, the process takes weeks (and in some cases even longer). If it is at all possible, we will do everything we can to help you get your Visa on time. We understand that your holiday can quickly turn into a logistical nightmare and will help you avoid it if we can. But it’s not always possible and we almost always need your help!

Why is it not always possible?

There are many factors which contribute to whether or not a Visa can be approved quickly. These include things like:

Which country’s passport you hold
The length of time you plan to stay in Australia
Your age
The type of Visa you are applying for
Whether you have been to Australia before
Whether you have overstayed any previous visas
Whether you have any health issues or a criminal record
The actual processing priorities and backlogs of the Department of Immigration or embassy

Keep in mind that thousands of people every day have an “urgent” situation. The Department of Immigration can only process so many applications each day. There may be many other people who put their application in before you and whose situation is also “urgent.” Just because you have left it to the last minute does not mean that this entitles you to urgent processing.

What can you do to help get your Visa in time?

There are plenty of things that you can do to help yourself. These include:

First and foremost, don’t leave your Visa until the last minute! Plan early! But if you have already passed that point, you can still help yourself by listening to your assigned migration agent!

When we lodge an application, we can’t ask the embassy or processing office that it be processed urgently if there are documents missing. They can’t grant the Visa if all the documents are not there.

We can help speed up processing by lodging what is called a “decision-ready”application. This is where we prepare a really solid application which the decision maker can open and see that everything they need has been provided. They can then grant the Visa without delay, or without having to go back and forth getting all the documents required.

As professional Migration Agents, we know exactly what documents are required for a particular situation to get the Visa processed quickly. For example, a 30-year-old self-employed man from Lebanon will need to provide different documents to a 60-year-old woman from Brazil. We know this because we have successfully managed thousands of cases. This is what we do all day every day!

If your Migration Agent has asked you to provide documents, it is for a reason. We don’t ask for documents that are not required to get your Visa approved.

If we ask you to provide documents, the way you can help yourself is to provide exactly what we have asked for. If you don’t, we have to go back and forth with you until we do get exactly what we asked for. This can take weeks of wasted time. If you provide us exactly what we ask for right from the start, this gives us the best possibility of helping you get your Visa in time.

Responding to our document requests can include, for example:

Translating documents into English
Providing clear scans of your documents that we can read
Answering every question we ask (not just some)
Providing every document we ask for (not just some)

If you provide everything we ask for, we will do everything we can to help get your Visa in time. We know it is important and want to help you—but we also need your help!

Real-life example:

Just this week, I had a young Egyptian client with an urgent need to travel (she wanted to fly in nine days). The standard processing time for a Visitor Visa in Cairo is four weeks. I explained this to the client and asked her to provide a lot of documents so that I could lodge a decision-ready application and request urgency.

She provided all of these documents within 2 days. The submission I lodged with the application was 32 pages long (for a Visitor Visa). My client provided everything I asked for right from the start. This enabled me to lodge a strong application and then I could ask the embassy for urgent processing because we provided every document at the start. We can’t ask the embassy to process an application urgently if all the documents aren’t there. They just get unhappy that they have been asked to help when an application is incomplete.

But when you lodge complete applications, this helps the embassy help you. In this case, the embassy processed the Visa in one day!

So . . . yes, in some cases, we can get your Visa for you very quickly. But often this depends on how well you respond to our requests.

In other cases, you may need to complete medical checks, or obtain police clearances, or possibly a number of other factors which mean that we just can’t get it done quickly. So again, the key is—start the process early and listen to the advice of your Migration Agent. We know what we are doing!

How does your Migration Agent help?

For starters, and as stated above, we know exactly what documents you are going to need in every situation. So we essentially know before we lodge an application whether it will be approved. This is very important, especially for urgent situations.

But another big advantage of using our services is that we know how, when and where to push for urgency. We know all the avenues to use to request urgency such as the best e-mail addresses, statistical codes, phone numbers and other related processes to communicate an urgent request on your behalf. It’s all good and well making a strong application, but if you don’t know how to get it in front of the right person, you won’t get urgent processing.

Making a strong application and requesting urgency isn’t always the best way, so we also advise on strategy. For example, you may want to stay in Australia for six months but you are also hoping to travel tomorrow (if possible). We may therefore advise you that if you apply for a six-month Visa today, you will need to do a chest X-ray as part of the process and you will need to show documents. A better alternative may be a three-month Visa which we can process in ten minutes with no documents and no X-ray. That way you can travel tomorrow and then when you are in Australia we can apply for an extension so you can stay for your intended six months.

This is just one basic example of a strategy in one circumstance. Finding the best solution for you will be based on your individual circumstances—there are many variables!

How to get started:

How to start the process with us depends on your situation. If you know which visa you are applying for, you can get the process started by taking an online assessment on our website. From there, you will be provided service options.

If you are not sure about your situation and would like to talk to one of our friendly advisors, a good place to start is to book a Skype consultation to have a face-to-face chat with us here.

I look forward to being able to help you with your visa situation in the future.

Finding reliable, professional visa help can be very challenging. If you have found this article helpful, please take a moment to share it using the icon visible on the left-hand side of this page.

John Bell
General Manager and Senior Migration Agent
MARN 0321386

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John Bell

Migration Advisor at National Visas

John Bell has been involved in the immigration industry since 2000 and has practiced in Australia as an Australian Registered Migration Agent since 2003. John also worked in the UK as a UK immigration adviser between 2000 and 2002.