Shenal

Hi there, I’m emailing on behalf of my husband is notoriously nonchalant about his Visa situation. I think he has PTSD and just avoids talking about it! I am an Australian citizen but when I married him, he was on a 489 regional subclass sponsored visa. He had completed his 2 years of work by Dec 2017 (pre-req for applying for 887 PR), but instead of applying for the 887 PR visa straight away in Jan 2018, he only applied in July 2018 (his typical avoidant behaviour when it comes to Visas!). He’s a full time employee who is going to be getting his 7 years of long service leave in November this year. He has been waiting for a response on his 887 visa now for 14 months (July 2018 to present September 2019). I was blissfully unaware of all the rules and complexities of the whole Australian visa system and have only understood it recently, when it started affecting my travel plans and also, when I started to wonder why we were waiting endlessly for a response on his 887 while he is still on his substantive 489 which will expire on 30 December 2019. My parents have booked us all an expensive holiday trip overseas for 9/10 days (leaving 21 December 2019 and scheduled to be arriving back on 29 December 2019 at 11:20pm) for which it will be difficult getting a refund. He didn’t really mention all of these complexities, and I’ve been left to do the research to look into our options and risks. my questions are, if we were to go on this trip: - if we apply for a bridging visa B from 21 Dec 2019 to say 5 Jan 2020 (just in case flights are delayed), would there be any issues doing that and would that mitigate any risks of him being blocked re-entering the country? - is there therefore a risk that if his 887 visa was granted in the 10 days he his overseas (being mindful that we are hoping to have already applied for a BVB and therefore hopefully the Australian government would be aware that we would be away for 10 days), that his application would be refused? - the last option is that he not go on the trip altogether for which $6,500 would go to waste. But I’d rather he be safe than sorry. any experts out there, any advice or thoughts you could give us? Sincerely S