A Venezuelan wacky guy living his Australian dream

The criminal background check is a list of past crimes an individual has been convicted or accused of it or the free of charge letter if no crime has been registered.

Here in Venezuela there are several types of crimes similar to those in the United Stated... Such as drug possession/consumption, homicide, illegal weapon registration or porting, robbery (except for needing, which means that if you rob someone and take them food is ok… at least for this bizarre government), and the list goes on and on. Except here the people related to power figures or corruption usually gets out of jail for free or takes the guy who didn't do anything...

Saying for short, the Justice system doesn't work that much.... Anyway, isn't the time nor the space to be complaining about…

In order to get the visa, you must probe you had been an excellent citizen by not committing any crime or being accused of committed one or what so ever. These are extremely important because are your credential for the Australian government that according to your file is clean and you aren’t going to be a trouble for your soon-new nation.

So, the journey started late in December last year, when I called the Ministry of Justice (currently called differently but is too long and I don’t want to make any reference of it at the moment) just to get an unpleasant,

“we are too busy this days and it is appropriate to tell you don’t come here till January…”

which means,

“we’re talking holydays vacations, do not bother!”

So, I decided to back off during holydays and call again at the beginning of the year 2008, just to receive another excuse

“sorry Sr. but we got to tell you the vice minister was changed… again… The request will take a little more than 8 days for you to get your background checks, it may take 1 full month till the minister consign another candidate for the position, who is the responsible for signing the paper.. We’ll call you back once your file comes out, ok?”

Thanks goodness, it only took 15 days (again Venezuelan government isn’t effective or efficient… and this has been since always) and by now the only thing left are the medical examination and I am done and ready to get my case reviewed by an officer and get the expected visa.

One good thing about these checks is you can request ‘em a couple of months before introducing your file in the department of immigration of Australia, and doesn’t make any harm to your timing or review if you make the request a little before is required. Remember that governmental departments may take a while to give you the file meanwhile they check and recheck every source of information.

Next post I will be showing a sample of the document you have to take to the law authority in order to get your papers.