I am from Nepal and I got accepted in the University of Melbourne for the MIS program. I applied for Australian streamlined student visa (subclass 573) on Jan 8th 2014. I have also included my de-facto partner in the application. My course begins on the 3rd of March and there is a compulsory orientation that I have to attend on the 24th of February and so I booked my tickets for the 18th of Feb, giving myself enough time to look for an accommodation. However it has been 30 working days today and 42 days in total and I have still not got my visa. I wrote to the university asking them I can miss Orientation to which they agreed and so I extended my departure to the 1st of March. I wrote to the embassy and called them a few times as well. They informed me that they are taking 3 months time to give the student visa. When I said streamlined visas are supposed to be faster they explain to me that they have a backlog of applications because of which even streamlined is now taking 3 months time. The embassy also confirmed that there has been no case officer assigned to my case yet. I am unable to understand how can streamlined visa take 3 months as I was not even given an COE from the Uni before 3 months from commencement date. Also I know more than 70 people (through a future student fb group) who applied after me and got their paper based visas in 23-25 working days and those who applied evisa got it in 4-7 working days. How can my application not be assigned a case officer since 30 working days while visas are being granted for other applicants. I want to know how the embassy decides that oh we will put this file aside and make them wait the most. I am worried that I will have to defer my course which means will cost me 5 months. I really do not know what I should be doing right now. Could someone please advice. ANSWER Overseas offices processing Student visa applications bend over backwards to try to meet course deadlines so you will probably still get your visa in time for your start date but you have to realise that there are only so many officers processing visa applications and when demand is high (as it always is around this time of the year), some applications will inevitably take a long time. The fact that some other students received their visas faster than you is just the luck of the draw but if theyre not from India, that would explain it. Indian Student visa applications can take much longer than applications from other countries because of the vast amount of bogus documentation that is submitted and the large number of downright fraudulent applications. Streamlined visas take less time than Assessment Level 3 or 4 visas, but make no mistake, everything you and other students submit must still be checked.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 12:19:58 +0000
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