457 visa advise needed urgently

[Guest dave&jacky]

Hi

Can anyone please give us some advise on a 457 temp visa,i am in adelaide on a 457 visa and have been here for 5 weeks, jacky my wife is due to join me in 2 weeks time her ticketone way is booked the house is due to be rented out from the end of the month, and i have had a phone call today from the agent that dealt with our visa application and they said that there may be a problem with jacky coming in on my visa,they have said that they need to apply for a seperate visa for jacky but they have been waiting for a letter from my employer who have been slow in coming through with it,

I was led to belive that jacky would come in on my visa has my wife and we had filled in all the paper work a long time ago.

Jacky has a holiday visa which runs out in oct but if she comes on that they wont let her in on a one way ticket.

ANY ADVICE PLEASE:arghh:

Regards Dave

[Guest kenmcfadyen]

Hi Dave,

 

We just got our passports back from the High Commission the other day with our 457 visas stickers in there. When we applied for the visas my partner was the main applicant and my son and I were the secondary applicants. When the visa was granted via e-mail, we were instructed to send the three passports to the High Commission to have them Evidenced. Did you go through a similar process?

 

Ken

[Gollywobbler]

Hi

Can anyone please give us some advise on a 457 temp visa,i am in adelaide on a 457 visa and have been here for 5 weeks, jacky my wife is due to join me in 2 weeks time her ticketone way is booked the house is due to be rented out from the end of the month, and i have had a phone call today from the agent that dealt with our visa application and they said that there may be a problem with jacky coming in on my visa,they have said that they need to apply for a seperate visa for jacky but they have been waiting for a letter from my employer who have been slow in coming through with it,

I was led to belive that jacky would come in on my visa has my wife and we had filled in all the paper work a long time ago.

Jacky has a holiday visa which runs out in oct but if she comes on that they wont let her in on a one way ticket.

ANY ADVICE PLEASE:arghh:

Regards Dave

 

Hello Dave

 

If this Agent did his/her job properly in the first place then Jacky should be on your visa. There are no ifs, buts and exclusions about this. If Jacky is not on your visa then the Agent has made a monumental cock-up somewhere.

 

Forget about flannel that a letter from the employer is awaited. Why is it needed and why is it awaited? The Agent is either incompetent or a crook, unfortunately, therefore in your shoes I would threaten to report the Agent to the MARA:

 

http://www.themara.com.au/Online/default.asp

 

I recommend that you contact DIAC immediately to get to the bottom of what is going on. DIAC will tell you the truth and if the Agent has let you down, DIAC will bust a gut to help you to sort the mess out.

 

They are also likely to be very angry with the Agent. Trust me, DIAC control the MARA. Without the annual bung from DIAC the MARA would be unable to function financially, plus DIAC are in a position to prosecute your Agent if need be, which the MARA are not.

 

Your visa was processed by the DIAC Business Centre in Adelaide, probably:

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/contacts/australia/business-centres/sa.htm

 

They might or might not still be responsible for you. DIAC have recently created "Centres of Excellence" for the 457 visa. Quite likely to be Centres of Uselessness:

The Melbourne outfit might be responsible for you since 1st July 2008:

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/contacts/centres-of-excellence/new-coe.htm

 

Personally, I'd ignore the niceties. If it were me, I would go hotfoot in person to DIAC in Currie Street:

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/contacts/australia/sa-adelaide.htm

 

They all have access to the ICSE database and the database will reveal the truth. They might want you to serve Form 956 on them, so as to get rid of the Agent's involvement but if you go there and they want it, they will give you the form and wait whilst you complete it.

 

http://www.immi.gov.au/allforms/pdf/956.pdf

 

I am reluctant to suggest solutions because I think DIAC are going to be your best ally and they really do come through with the goods in a situation like yours.

 

Best wishes

 

Gill

[Guest dave&jacky]

Hi Gill

Thanks for all your advise, things have moved on a bit since i posted the thread,I have been told by the agent that the reason they dont apply for the dependants visa at the same time as the primary applicant is because i am on a three month trial period and they wait till you get here to work and it is the company policy but this was not explained to us, we just thought that she would come in on my visa also they knew for some time when jacky was coming over so like you said someone has cocked it up,the agent also said today about the 457 supercentres that have been set up,and they have lodged jackys visa at the perth centre because that is where the agent is based,she also said that they have had a depentants visa for another 457 visa applicant come back within a week so hopefully jackys may come through before she leaves,but the other problem is if it does not come through in time she will have to change her ticket because she is on a oneway ticket and customs will not let you in with out a return ticket on a visitors visa, we are not very happy about all this but i dont want to go in to currie st yet incase it makes matters worse,thanks again for your help and advise and i will let you know how we get on.

Regards dave

[Gollywobbler]

Hi Dave

 

The advice you have received from the Agent sounds like absolute rubbish to me. The obvious time to include the Partner and Children is when the original 457 application is made, so I would insist that the Agent pays any additional costs himself for including Jacky at this very late stage. The Agent can pay any fees DIAC might want plus waive his own fees, given the incompetent mess he has made of things so far.

 

Whether or not somebody enters Oz on a one way ticket has nothing to do with Australian Customs. That bit is down to DIAC. Who make it very clear that they do not insist on a return ticket if somebody is travelling on a tourist visa. The only thing that DIAC insist on is evidence that the person has the money to buy a return ticket if need be. If DIAC were to question Jacky on arrival in Oz and she explains the situation about the 457 visa to them, there wouldn't be any problem about letting her enter Oz.

 

The airlines are the tougher nuts to crack about this one. The reason why the airlines try to insist on a return ticket is because if the passenger is travelling on a fake passport or a fake visa, DIAC might well spot that on arrival in Oz. They have the details of something like 2.3 million stolen passports on their database, for example, because they share this information with other Governments.

 

If DIAC refuse the passenger entry to Oz, firstly they fine the airline that carried the person to Oz and the fines are punitively high. Secondly, DIAC insists that the airline which carried the person to Oz must also carry the person back to wherever the original journey began from. DIAC do not care who pays for the repatriation flight. As far as they are concerned, the airline is at fault so the airline had better absorb the cost of the return flight itself if the passenger cannot afford to do so.

 

The quid pro quo for DAC's uncompromising stance about this is that at check in, the girl knows that your eventual destination is Oz, and she swipes your passport through her machine. This somehow sends a signal to the DIAC computer if an e-visa is involved. The DIAC computer confirms that it recognises both the passport and the visa numbers.

 

With a paper visa label, there is a hotline number in Canberra that is manned round the clock every day of the year including Christmas Day. The phone number is reserved solely for airlines which land in Australia including Qantas. Any of the airlines can ring up DIAC in Canberra at any time and speak to a human. Together they can check the passenger's identity, passport number and the visa label to ensure that all 3 tally exactly with the information on the DIAC computer.

 

So in theory it should be impossible to board a flight for Australia unless one has a valid visa for Oz, a valid passport etc. The airlines also have another line of defence in the shape of their Boarding Officer, who is always at the airport when one of his own company's flights is preparing to leave. If he is not happy with the passenger, passport and visa, the person concerned will not be boarding that flight.

 

Despite all these precautions, Singapore Airlines is the only one I've come across who understand a word of any of it.

 

My mother was booked on a Malaysian Airlines flight to Perth leaving London on 8th January 2005. (At any rate, we were trying to book her on that flight at the time.) I could NOT get the Malaysian Airlines computer to accept a return date 6 months later. It just wouldn't do it, so I phoned them in London - on Christmas Eve because Mum's passport had come back from Australia House that morning with a new, six-month visa label in it.

 

I was told, "Not possible to return more than 3 months later. Visa only valid for 3 months, you see." I wrangled with the cretins for a good 1.5 hours. No they wouldn't contact DIAC themselves - even though all they had to do was pick up the phone.

 

Eventually at about 4pm I was told to get Mum's passport photocopied and fax the copy to a guy called Aziz at Heathrow straightaway. They gave me a fax and phone number for this chap Aziz, who was the Boarding Officer apparently.

 

Great stuff. I live in a small village and I don't have a fax or photocopier at home. The office had closed at midday and was locked up like a drum, so I couldn't do anything via going back there. The village post office came to my aid. Nobody in the shop at the time knew how to send a fax via their computer, but they rang up the only local lass who does know and she came rushing to send the fax for me.

 

By then it was 4.55pm and the two local supermarkets were closing at 5. I needed cream, cheese, ham, milk and all the other last-minute items. Luckily the Co-op manageress let me stay in the shop for an extra 15 minutes and served me from the long since closed deli counter herself.

 

Hot foot back home to phone Aziz to see whether he had received the fax and was happy that Mum's visa was OK? Aziz had left for his Christmas Hols and would not be back till December 29th. I eventually got hold of him on Dec 29th. He confirmed that everything was OK and phoned his blasted booking people to sort the flights out.

 

After that I said, "NEVER AGAIN with Malaysian Airlines." All of us have always used Singapore Airlines ever since because you simply don't get ANY of this nonsense from them.

 

But you might have to be very, very tough with the airline, my friend.

 

As for the visa, it need NOT take a week to add Jacky to your 457 visa. DIAC will do it on the spot for you if they know why it is so urgent and how angry you are with the Agent. DIAC in Currie St can ring the Perth Business Centre for you and sort this bit out, I assure you.

 

Good luck & best wishes

 

Gill

[Guest caoimhe]

Hi Dave

I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on the subject of visa's but I have to agree with Gill on this. What your agent has told you sounds really suspect. My O/H was the main applicant and when the visa was granted myself and the kids where included as dependants. All our passports were sent to our agent at the same time and all came back with a visa in each one.

You really should call into the DIAC office and check this out.

Good luck and let us know how you get on

Jacqui

[Guest dave&jacky]

Hi Gill and Jacqui,

Thanks for both of your replys just to let you know that i went in to currie St last week and spoke to a couple of immigration agents and they assured me that Jacky should not have a problem coming through on her tourist visa on thursday also it should be ok her only having a one way ticket as long as she can prove that she has einouth funds/credit card to pay for a return ticket out of the country,

But even better news tonight when i opened my emails there was one from the agent in Perth saying that Jackys 457 visa had been granted today:) so she should be ok now,I rang her to tell her and she was very happy and relieved, at the time she was waiting to go on to the London eye with our daughter Katie they are having a few days together in london before jacky flys out on Thursday, and that is going to be the hardest thing when she has to say goodbye to Katie I know it was for me when i left them both at Heathrow 6 weeks ago.

Just looking forward to Jacky getting to Adelaide now ;)its been a long 6 weeks.

Thanks again.

Dave.