Information Please.... :-)

[Ashleigh]

Out of interest are medicals and police checks done before you submit your EOI?

[Guest Rachael M Bowen]

Hi

 

no you lodge your expression of interest and then you wait to see if you get invited to apply for the visa. if you have a positive result (invitation to apply for your visa) you then lodge your visa application. you wait to be appointed to a case officer who will tell you to take your medicals and police checks. we are just waiting to be allocated a case officer. I think once they give you the nod you have 28 days to make your appointment for medicals/police. These are then sent to DIAC. the date on the medicals and police checks(which ever one is the earliest) are the dates 12 months on that you have to activate your visa.

 

our time line is

25/06/13 EOI sentto DIAC

01/07/13Invitation to apply for a 189 visa.

12/07/13 FinalVisa Application Sent.

like I said we are waiting for our CO. our migration agent predicted 6 weeks which will be wc 19/8/13

hope this helps.

[Ashleigh]

Great, thank you! My husband has his skills test Monday and IELTS on 7th September, he has 11 years work experience bricklaying but we have been told by our agent that they count the first 3 years as training so with him just getting 8 years she has advised he does the IELTS just in case he doesn't get the full 15 points, can't wait to submit everything.

 

Hope you get allocated an officer soon xx

[Guest Rachael M Bowen]

If I can give only one piece of advice it would be to practice, practice, practice the IELTS!! It seems daft having to take an English test but because we are what they call "native speakers" we are automatically too intelligent for it!! I have a Bachelors degree and ended up sitting the exam three times (I had to get 8's in all four components) however, the second one I appealed but as it took 8 weeks to get a response I had to take a third test ( so we didn't slow up the application process) which I scored 8.5's across 3 and a 9 in 1. It turned out that I actually passed my 2nd test!!!! I had an hours Skype session (£25) with a woman in Brighton who is also an IELTS examiner she was great and really showed me the tricks to passing. I guess it depends on what score your husband needs to attain. If you want her details PM me and I'll send you them. I also have extra practice papers for the reading section if he wants them. This is the section that tripped me up the True, False, Not Given as we read too much into the texts. He should have 30 hours free practice when he got his IELTS confirmation.

[Blossom]

I didn't practice at all for the IELTS. When I took mine the only people who generally took it were nurses. The speaking bloke told me I was the first native English speaker he had tested.

It was harder than I expected, but I got over 8 in all sections first go (and then they changed the immigration rules so I couldn't use the bloomin thing).

[Guest Rachael M Bowen]

That's bizarre you couldn't use it, now it's the first thing migration companies tell you to book.

[Blossom]

They changed the list of jobs you could apply with a couple of weeks later (but before I'd applied). Grrrrr

[Ashleigh]

Thanks all, he had a look at some practice ones to get a jist of what they were like, I must say I had to re read a few of the questions on the true, false, not given section!

 

We have been told he has to get at least 7 on each section, it doesn't matter about the overall score but 7 in each section to pass.

 

I hope he passes! x

[Guest Rachael M Bowen]

Hope he passes too, 7's should be ok for him. I made Trev take the online tests and he couldn't believe how precise you had to be. He put Jubilee Line and didn't add Extension and it marked him wrong!!!!

good luck I'll let you know when we get our CO and then you can see the time scales x