A Venezuelan wacky guy living his Australian dream

A year ago I wrote a post saying how cool the DIAC web site was providing a tool enabling any aspirant / applicant to check their case requirements and some additional information... The truth is (and I started notice this fault later on) almost 6 months later my case didn’t had any update; even when I sent every requirement requested on the web page months ago, the case didn’t had an update and I was worried because I didn't wanted to fail to complain any docs.

Took me an email (I know, an email haven’t killed anyone, but...) to get information related to my medicals. So I started to wonder... Doesn’t the DIAC know how to link up different data sources? Why does my information needs to be in the case officer hands to get some update? Why haven’t they thought in a tracing workflow of some documents giving even more information to the case and reducing dramatically silly inquiries?

As computer scientist and program manager I know these things are quite possible and easy to implement and even though, DIAC doesn’t have it one year later (or more) from the tool's release date; somehow disappointing. From my point of view, someone at http://www.immi.gov.au development team said “lets create a web page so people can check their statuses regarding to their stuff... but how the information will be filled in with different departments data (as the Health Operation Centre) or institutions isn’t really our biz... They will find another way to deal with it!”; creating a very limited tool (maybe that's the intention).

Hopefully someone from the Department of Immigration And Citizenship will read this post and do something about it (please do not deny my visa application because of this constructive critic =P... Seriously, don’t) creating a better experience for those waiting to have any request from our case officers or just to determine if our requirements are fulfilled. Please don’t get me wrong, is a great thing to have at least a small piece of information from our cases, but it might work much more for DIAC as well to determine what’s left without having the officer scanning and searching the folder for pieces of paper or notes.

Those applicants looking for more information... The Query Application Status could be very tricky and out of date at times unless you have a case officer already working on your case or you being very annoying.

At the moment the DIAC (Department of Immigration And Citizenship of Australia) is taking a horrible and large time to process any visa request, they say is related to the amount of documents lodged on July and August 2007 by countless families that didn’t wanted to be excluded from the process by not meeting the basic requirements. But shortly after the notorious Wall Street’s collapse and most of the assets around different markets, my soon to be prime minister Kevin Rudd announced (under "consideration") a shortage on the Australian migratory program giving some of the reasons such as:

What is the result of this (my point of view, you might share your own on comments)? Well, the process to approve or reject postulants or candidates will take as long as they want to… Why? Because they surely know they are going to need more people to expand the Australian economy (with or without the world financial crisis), because they already have good candidates waiting for the visa any time soon... so, what’s the rush, right?

Making story short, if you are waiting for the Australian visa at the moment, make your mind for an unprecedented delay for grant letters and approvals. Plus you got to include the high risk of your company to consider you disposable in case they are running out of funds, messing up a little bit more your process.

Please, express your feelings, is important for me to know what you think around the world.

Till the next post or comment.

Cheers

Well, the month of July ended and we didn’t get the desired call saying, “hello there, G’day, this is the department of Immigration and Citizenship from Australia, we are calling you regarding to your visa application which was accepted. Congratulations.”
The waiting is the most awful stage of this entire process, but this is disappointing because the plan was to get the papers on July and get to Aus as fast as possible before the year ended; but now, doesn’t matter if we get the visa approved this month or the upcoming, now we are going to be moving on January… So our project gets an unpleasant six month delay… This reminds me the commercial of “where the bloody hell are you?”...

And my answer is... In bloody Venezuela mate, and not thanks to DIAC...

Triple check the given information, passport ID, dates and everything else to avoid any problem with your case (as explained in the DIAC’s web page). Everything cool? Hit the next button and you will see some abstract information of your case… It might take you a couple of minutes to understand what is being show.

In your final stage of the process, you can feel a little exasperated, stressed or disoriented but checking as often as you want might gives you a better idea of how everything goes and calm you a little.

This post is related to: "Check your case status (Updated)"