Yet A Longer Road to Partner Visa
It seemed like the ongoing struggle to get my fiancee a visa couldn't get worse but it seems like it may have.
Background
But first let me summarize everything up to this point. So Cristina lives in Venezuela, where I, as an American, cannot go, and being from a collapsing country she can't just come to Australia on any easy-to-get visa.
After we got engaged in September 2019, to get her here we would get married (was advised the Australian government would be unlikely to recognize our relationship as bona fide unless we were officially married already, but also we planned to get married regardless), but as we can't do it in either of our home countries and many countries require at least one of the parties to the marriage to be a resident of that country it took some figuring out but finally we settled on Bahamas in April 2020. Once married, I could list her as my partner on the permanent residency (PR) visa application I then had in the works and voila when that came through she'd have legal residency here as my partner on the visa. We began making solid plans, booking an appointment with the wedding officer and flights and starting to work on hotels ... and then Covid happened.
My work visa was running out and I couldn't wait any longer to file for the PR, so I had to do so without her listed as the partner. Once my own PR visa was approved in February of this year we immediately turned our attention to the visa situation for Cristina. The immigration lawyer recommended a "prospective marriage visa" and, as Cristina was by now mid-way through her anesthesiology residency, the lawyer advised, which I'll quote because I feel a bit salty about it now: "I think the application can commence at the end of the year as she’s still completing her postgraduate course. The prospective marriage visa will take around 12 months to process and by the time it’s being assessed, she should be ready to come to Australia etc."
So we cooled our heels and twiddled our figurative fingers, anxiously waiting to see eachother again. Now, the other day, it getting towards a year from Cristina's graduation from this program, we emailed the lawyer again.
The Latest
So first of all the former lawyer is apparently no longer with the firm. The "director" (as they apparently call all business chief executives here) advised us that it takes "23-30" months for the prospective partner visa to go through. Here we let a year go by and now, after two years have already passed since we became engaged, we are told we probably have to wait two to two-and-a-half MORE years!! (if we get married before then it would make the prospective marriage visa application invalid and we'd have to start over with a partner visa).
AND THAT'S NOT ALL
He advises that sometime beween next week and the end of this month they are going to change the partner visa framework TO MAKE IT HARDER -- instead of one partner visa application I will have to apply for eligibility to sponsor a partner and then she applies as my sponsee. Since the lawyer advised me it's not possible to get the application in in a week (I didn't think it would be but had to ask) this situation will probably apply to us. With just our luck it will probably shoot up the costs (did I mention they're currently $13,239.90 Ausdollars (/ $9,757.61 US)) as well as increase the time. ::grinds teeth::
When I told Cristina these things, via whatsapp (I was at work when the email came in), she expressed various lamentations and "It's too long, I can't take another year" and then didn't respond for most of an hour, which left me doubly freaking out, that perhaps she was despairing of this crazy odyssey and throwing in the towel. But fortunately it turned out that was not the case.
So that's the current situation. At least soon we'll be able to travel again and we'll at least be able to meet in a third country again so it won't necessarily be another two years before even seeing eachother (though it might be one entire additional year, her boss isn't big on giving them any time off at all from the residency program).
