Good morning to Down Under Visa clients
At the moment our tourist visa applications are taking a long time to process, and this is causing some stress amongst our clients.
I had somebody yesterday (and the same person about once a week) (a) reminding me that the application has taken nearly a month, (b) asking me if I had any news on it, and (c) reminding me that their previous application only took a few days. And we have plenty of other applicants in the same boat.
(a) All our tourist visa applications are taking longer than usual at the moment, and we are aware of this…….however there is not a single thing we can do.
Why is it happening? We don’t know!
I can only guess that at the moment they have more applications than they have staff to process them. There are only so many hours in a day. This can and will happen to the Embassy just as it happens to all of us sometimes. They will get to everyones applications when they can, no doubt.
Can I get updates, or can I hurry your application up?
What would you do if you were the Embassy? There may be 1,000 visa applications sitting there for all we know. Would you go and select one special one because Jeff Harvie asked you to? I know I wouldn’t. Every single one of those applications is urgent to the person who has their name on it.
(b) If we have news, we will tell you straight away. Asking if there is news makes it sound like we would be keeping something from you. We don’t do that. And most importantly, if YOU had a mountain of applications to get through would YOU keep sending out news reports on each one? The Embassy don’t give out updates, and if I was to keep asking them I would take them away from the task of getting the applications processed.
(c) Most of the year the Manila Embassy is way ahead of what they call the “Global Standard”. Most tourist visa applications are processed in less than 2 weeks. Some are processed in a day or two. Right now, for whatever reason, they are taking longer.
So that’s the situation. If your application is sitting in the pile, then you’re definitely not alone. It’s definitely not “a sign” that there is something very wrong with your application and they are just waiting to give you the bad news. It just means you need to take that unpleasant advice that I need to give clients all the time……Be Patient!
And yes, we DO care. We love giving clients the good news about visa grants, and we do know how stressful and worrying it is when they drag out. But we are also in a position where we can’t let the stress get to us in the same way as it gets to you. Someone has to keep a level head, and we have to keep working. If we took all the stress to heart, we couldn’t bring ourselves to face work every day.
Looking forward to giving you all the good news very soon hopefully!
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The only thing is that there is no physical timeline or someway of knowing what number in the line you are. I am waiting for my wife in the Philippines to get her visa so she can come to Australia and we can be together, my wife is on a forum which has many people waiting for there visas to be approved, what we found is some people are getting there approved even when they applied months after we did, which tells me there isn’t a structured order which is very unprofessional and unfair. May I also add that the timelines are inconsistent people get visa done in 2 months or maybe 5 or 6 then some people more than 1 year. Yes we need to be patient but they need to be better in how they respond or how they communicate with applicants considering the amount we need to pay to actually apply.. And if there is a large volume of applications they need to think about getting more staff so they can deal with the work load.
Always been one of the sore spots, Joe. I wish we could tell people or show them something meaningful, but we’ve never been able to. We’ve had complicated applications through in a matter of a few months, and simple ones take over a year. How it works is one of the great mysteries. One thing I will tell you is that nagging them is a very bad idea.