So how did it go? Was it a success?
At the end of the meeting, we didn’t get a congratulations. It was more of a feeling of “Is that it?”. And so we asked…um…is that it? Well sort of. We had passed in principle, but needed to provide the Police Certificate with proper spelling. We were handed a small form that says what we have to do and leave deflated.
That was just the start of what is known as administrative processing. Gladly, we only needed to sort out a minor technicality. It can be a long, drawn out process if they are unsure of your credentials or want to run further security checks. For us, the process dragged on for another 3 months, during which when the updated Police Certificate was provided (and a further two weeks of waiting for our passports to arrive in the post) there were issues with the clarity of a fingerprint, involving an unexpected flight back to Sydney and then an error on marital status in one of the passports. Luckily the finished, approved and correct version of the visa arrived in our mailbox on Christmas Eve. It made for a great Christmas present after all the stress of the process. In total, it had been 14 months of uncertainty of our immediate future, from application to receipt of the Green Card sticker in the passports.
