In the 2012/2013 financial year, the Manila Embassy processed 2,919 partner visas, ie. the combination of Subclass 300’s and Subclass 309’s.

That’s a lot of visas! 243 per month. 56 a week. 8 per day.

And that means 2,919 couples, which makes 5,838 people who wait every year for a partner visa from Philippines to Australia.

And every single one of those 5,838 people is waiting for that visa to be approved. Every single one of them is worried, anxious and lonely.

I have no idea how many Case Officers there are in the permanent visa section in Manila, but we deal with them all and they are just a handful.

The point I’m making here is that there is your application sitting in the Australian Embassy side by side with 2,918 other partner visa applications at any given time, and that it’s not a reasonable thing under reasonable circumstances to ask us to get on the phone and demand action and to prioritise yours over all of those others. If you thought somebody else’s application was being shuffled ahead of you, then you’d be very annoyed and rightly so. This is especially the case because several hundred of the 2,918 other applications are going to be Down Under Visa clients!

If an application is running very late, and by “very late” I mean 13 or so months, then we will make a polite enquiry if you ask us. Of course things can go wrong in any system at all, and we can see some positive responses from this. But if it’s 12 months or less? This is the “global standard” for partner visas. Manila is way ahead of that standard with 9 months as fairly average, so we do not want to nag them if it’s taken 10 months so far.

Why would a visa application take longer?

Not all applications are the same. We make this clear at the beginning when we give you a customised To-Do List of visa requirements. All client circumstances are different, and documents and facts need to be checked for accuracy. Sometimes this takes longer.

And the Embassy will do more indepth checks at times. They can and will contact schools and check of school records are correct. I knew of an occasion where they checked a Baptismal Certificate and found it to be fake. If something makes them suspicious, it’s their job to check it further. This will take extra time.

So please be patient. The important thing was that the relationship is genuine to start with, and that the documents, evidence and other information in the application backs that up. If that is the case? Then you have nothing to worry about.