How long does an Australian partner visa* application take to process?

The Australian Embassy website in Manila says 12 months! This is based on the DIBP (Department of Immigration and Border Protection) “Global Service Standard”. See HERE.

Our own experience still says 6 months is the average processing time for an Australian Partner Visa through the Manila Embassy, which means they’re not such a bad lot.

Remember that “average” means the sum of all processing times divided by the number of applicants. Some take as little as 2 months. Others can take up to 12 months. Those extremes are rare, but 3 ½ months or 9 months are not uncommon. So “average of 6 months” does not mean “It will definitely take 6 months”.

Why do some take 3 months and others take 9 months?

Is your application in the system and taking longer than 6 months?

• Does this mean it’s a bad application and will definitely be refused?
• Is it a definite sign of a problem?

None of the above!

We get emails every single week from clients working themselves into a panic. We try to answer them, only to get another email a week or two later from the same client in an even worse panic. Sometimes they tell me about somebody they know who lodged an application after them, and theirs is already granted.

Yes, well so do we! We lodge so many hundreds of applications, we will invariably have lodged applications after yours which were granted earlier. Is this because their applications were good and yours is riddled with problems? No, not at all. It’s just the way it is.

So why does one application take longer than another if it’s not because of problems?

Simple answer: We don’t know.

What we do know is that if there’s a problem, they tell us. In the majority of cases, no news actually IS good news. If there are problems, they will tell us and we will tell you.

Can I get an update? Please read this: https://www.downundervisa.com/2013/11/18/visa-application-tracking-and-progress-reports/

Should I contact them and ask them why it’s taking so long, and to try to hurry them up?

Answer me this: Whose application should they stop working on so they can put yours through faster? And do you think they will respond positively to you interrupting their work, especially at busy times like just before Christmas, in order to tell you that they have nothing to tell you?

I think the answer is NO to both.

I’ll leave this post with one fact for you to think over:

We at Down Under Visa get many worried and panicking clients contacting us utterly convinced that their more-than-6-months application is definitely going to be refused. Not ONE of those worried clients has ever had their partner visa refused!

*By “partner visa”, I mean Subclass 300 fiancée visas (prospective marriage visas or PMV’s) and Subclass 309 spouse visas (partner visas).