Who is my Case Officer? Advice for Australian visa applicants.

Who is my Case Officer? Has my Case Officer been assigned yet?

These are questions we are asked from time to time. Fortunately not too often, but it usually happens after somebody has been reading the amateur migration advice forums on the internet and wants to find out how their application is progressing. Normally it means the stress and worry is getting to them.

Despite what the forums will tell you, the Australian Embassy in Manila does not send out an email to applicants or to Migration Agents saying “Hello, my name is Trixibelle, and I will be your Case Officer”. It doesn’t happen, and it never has in my experience.

We do understand the desire to know what’s going on. Of course you do. If I was in the same position I would be much the same. When we did our own prospective marriage visa application years ago we were fortunate to have ours processed in I think 2 months, so it was minimal stress. That was a lot of years ago, and things have got more complicated and certainly slower since then. Two month partner visa applications are a thing of the past, so the stress increases.

And we also know that “Who is my Case Officer?” normally proceeds a client emailing the Embassy to not only bypass Down Under Visa as your agent, but to give the Embassy a bit of a chase-up.

Yes, we understand why you want to know what’s going on, but no we’re not OK with you emailing the Embassy.

Why shouldn’t visa applicants email the Embassy?

You engaged Down Under Visa to manage your application, because we know what we’re doing. We are professionals and we do virtually nothing but partner visas and tourist visas for couples from the Philippines to Australia. This is our area, and we are very good at what we do.

The thing is that part of us knowing what we’re doing is us knowing that the processing stage (ie. when the application is in the Embassy) is when we all need to sit back and wait for the application to be processed. Trying to hurry things along or to get progress reports is counterproductive, and this is why we don’t do it and why we insist that you don’t do it either.

Those of you who deal with the general public know that there are only so many hours in the day, and sometimes you are swamped with work. The fact that partner visa applications take considerably more than two months these days indicates that the Embassy workload has increased and the manpower hasn’t.

And given that they are obviously busy, having to deal with clients chasing them up is going to achieve very little other than ensuring they get less work done in a day than they would if they didn’t get chase-ups to reply to. I’m sure that they appreciate the fact that most Down Under Visa clients do fortunately leave them to it, as I suspect those doing it themselves probably annoy the bejeebies out of them all the time and would contribute to longer processing times for everybody.

So as we always say, please be patient. Despite the lack of feedback, your application is a good and sound application or we would never have submitted it. Don’t make things harder for everyone, and don’t try to fight battles that were never meant to be battles in the first place. Keep yourselves busy, and appreciate that you are lucky enough to have someone you miss as much as you do. The good news is just around the corner for you.