Tourist visa then onshore partner visa later – Can you do this?

You’ve probably heard advice from the one-visa-experts on a “Visas to Australia” Facebook group, saying “Oh, just get her over on a simple tourist visa. You can marry her and lodge an onshore partner visa and she can stay!”

Sounds very easy. Sure. Easy until you try it!

Please note!

We have NO issues with Onshore Partner Visas lodged inside Australia. Maybe 85% of our Australian partner visa applications are Subclass 820 Onshore Partner Visas. (The rest being Subclass 309 Offshore Partner Visas and Subclass 300 Prospective Marriage Visas). We recommend them all the time, and we get great results.

So what’s the issue with onshore partner visas?

The issue is the order in doing things, and in assuming things are simple! 

Why listen to us instead of the Facebook experts? Because we’ve managed literally thousands of partner visa applications over the years from the Philippines. Most of the advice-givers have done only one! We have the runs on the board and we have a great reputation, with many new clients coming from referrals from older clients who’ve never forgotten what we did for them, often 10+ years ago.

So yes, the issue is the ORDER in doing things.

You cannot organize a quality partner visa application in Australia in 3 months

Why? Too much to do in too little time! Did you think the tourist visa application was complicated? A partner visa application is 6 – 7 times more work! And a tourist visa grant is normally for just 3 months stay! Think about it!

This is made even worse:

1. If you have a wedding to organize, and/or
2. if you are working at your job every day and have only a certain number of free hours

And what REALLY makes it even worse is that your lovely lady from the Philippines will need documents from the Philippines which she will need for the Onshore Partner Visa application. And trying to organize those from inside Australia? A logistical challenge! It relies on having relatives willing and able/capable to organize them for her and to courier them.

The Philippines is a country where:

• Commuting to the place to organize documents is usually time-consuming
• Almost nothing can be organized fully online
• Most documents require commuting to an office somewhere and standing in a long line
• And where errors in documents are common, which requires more traveling, standing in line and sometimes waiting for months for documents to be corrected.

And the Department does NOT accept documents with errors because someone writes an explanatory note why it has errors. An error in an official document = a bogus document! Visa refusal and a three year ban!

So Down Under Visa doesn’t like partner visas added on as an afterthought?

Correct on that one.! Why? Because we don’t want you messing up your application! And we’ve seen clients before run out of time, and it’s not pleasant! We’ve also had desperate clients begging us to lodge an application as-is, even though we all know it’s not up to standard.

Quality visa applications = high success rates. We hate refusals!

All we’re asking you to do is to NOT treat an Onshore Partner Visa application as an afterthought. As an add-on to do later once she’s there. 

Please treat it seriously, and if you wish to apply for an Onshore Partner Visa make that your very FIRST priority. We can (and DO) start these applications while your Filipina sweetheart is still here in the Philippines where she has the time and the practical ability to organize all the documents she needs, as well as those extra documents or document corrections we may discover during the process.

Yes, DURING the process. We never know what a visa applicant will need for an Onshore Partner Visa until we’ve started work on it. Fine-tuning along the way is not so unusual.

What if she is already inside Australia and you don’t want her to leave?

TALK to us! I’m saying it’s not our ideal scenario to see a partner visa started on a tourist visa, however we will not refuse to help you! You just need to be prepared to hit the ground running on the partner visa application, and rely on relatives to help with documents. Again, TALK to us!

So please get an assessment for a Partner Visa and mention that you would prefer to apply for the partner visa ONSHORE while she’s there with a Tourist Visa. If you meet the criteria, we will be happy to help you with a successful visa application. 

NB. This is an edited update of a previous BLOG post. DEFINITELY still timely advice!

Jeff Harvie is a Registered Migration Agent from Australia, but resident in Philippines since 2010 with his Filipina wife Mila and large extended family. Experienced with the Philippines culture, cross-cultural relationships and bureaucracy as well as Australian visas and Australian Migration Law, he writes with authority and fortunately with enough informality and humour that the average Aussie gets it! Down Under Visa specialises in visas for Australians in relationships with ladies and gents from Philippines, Thailand, China and Vietnam. Read MORE