It's been a big year for us so far, and we're not even two weeks into 2018 yet.
Because...
Well, if I told you now, you'd immediately stop reading. So we'll tease it out a little.
We made this decision back in June, and it was the beginning of September before we were able to submit all our paperwork to the immigration consultant. We were told that it could take anywhere from six to nine months before a decision would be reached. (Side note: a friend of mine waited a year and a half for her PR to come through, so our expectations were pretty low!)
Here's our personal experience as Americans applying for PR in Australia, as well as some of the challenges we faced:
It's expensive.
We thought we did enough number-crunching before starting the application, but we were still very surprised at how much the whole thing cost. The application itself was an estimated $10,000, but on top of that were many other fees: a health exam ($1,000) and an unnecessary follow-up exam ($600+, more details about that later), FBI fingerprint checks ($50 per application and additional for expedited international postage), passport-sized photos... it added up to a lot. In comparison, another skilled work visa would have cost us under $500.
Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork.
The amount of paperwork wasn't surprising, but it was tedious. Maybe even more tedious than my grad school final assessment. The paperwork included scrounging up personal details about every family member (including half/step-relatives), listing every address we've lived at for the past ten years, and listing every international trip we've taken in the past ten years as well. Which for some, wouldn't be too complicated - but when you're from a blended family (like Ben) and have moved around and traveled a lot post-college (like me), be prepared to do some digging. (Facebook was actually quite useful in this situation, for once!)
The health assessment. Good grief.
Certain Australian visas (some, not all) require full health assessments
The health exam includes blood and urine samples, a routine physical (FYI they have strict guidelines for pregnant and menstruating women - as in, they can't get a health exam, I kid you not!), and a fancy chest x-ray. Despite the awkwardness of wearing paper-thin gowns and waiting in a room full of other people in the same attire, everyone we encountered was very friendly.
Because Arden was under 2 years of age at the time, she thankfully didn't need her blood drawn. Her examination was very simple: weight, height and head circumference measurements. Which the doctor performed while Arden squirmed around, restless and upset due to the long waiting period. A second doctor gave me and Ben our physical assessments, then sat us down to discuss the results.
"Your daughter is short," she said. Which was of no surprise to us, as Arden has almost always been in the 10th percentile for most of her measurements - still normal (and especially with a short Asian parent).
"Yes, she is," we agreed.
"But she looks fine, and she seems to be developing really well. Is she saying words yet?"
"Arden, can you say words?" Ben asked Arden.
"...words..." said Arden with a smirk.
We all laughed. The doctor seemed pleased with our results.
A few days later, we got an e-mail from the health clinic that Arden had failed her assessment due to her height measurement, which had been reported as... in the 1.6th percentile? Something like that. A follow-up assessment with an infant specialist would be required before our PR application could continue. I was pretty certain that they had failed to measure Arden correctly and that re-measuring her would solve the problem, but the health clinic would not see us again as "the doctor's assessments are final". Which meant that we had to cough up $600 to see an infant specialist about an hour away from Melbourne. The good news was that we were initially quoted $900 for the follow-up assessment, but somehow got transferred to a cheaper doctor. So yay, we saved $300?
Arden and I visited the infant specialist, who immediately seemed apologetic about having to see her, as it was pretty clear that she didn't have any obvious physical developmental problems. Arden immediately sat in the corner and started playing with toys.
"Guitar!" my 20-month old daughter pointed at a photo of a violin.
"Actually, that's a violin," I corrected her.
"But that's pretty darn close!" the doctor chimed in, impressed and a bit confused about why we were in his office.
As expected, the doctor measured Arden (correctly, this time) and placed her in the 10th percentile, which meant that the initial measurement was very wrong and that we had totally wasted this doctor's time. Ugh.
Interestingly enough, the doctor made a few comments about the Permanent Residency process, explaining that if Arden actually did have a developmental problem, our PR application would probably be denied as we would be deemed a "burden on Australia's universal healthcare system"...
So. Should Ben and I have spoken up during our first assessment when the doctor commented on Arden's height? Should I have peered over her shoulder as she typed in Arden's information and questioned all the numbers like a crazy helicopter mother? Should I have insisted that the first doctor re-measure her lying horizontally (instead of standing vertically) because that's really how young children should be accurately measured? Who knows... but that's exactly what I'll be doing from now on for all of Arden's health assessments!
In total, we paid $1,000 for the initial exam (including $100 for a doctor to measure Arden incorrectly), and $600 to waste an infant specialist's time (and ours!) for the follow-up exam. If that's not money well spent, I don't know what is.
Oh, and when the infant specialist sent me Arden's correct assessment, all of her age-related information was totally wrong, so we had to have him correct it. Fun times!
It was 2017, but apparently we're still using fingerprinting technology from 1917.
U.S. citizens applying for Australian PR need to have their fingerprints taken for the FBI to declare that they aren't criminals. The standard way of doing this is to go to an approved fingerprinting place (usually a police station) to get all your fingerprints on a sheet of paper, and mail it to one of four American fingerprinting companies (there are more than four fingerprinting companies in the U.S., but Australia's immigration department apparently only trusts four...) where they send the prints to the FBI and get word on whether or not you're a fugitive. Simple enough.
Ben and I went to the Melbourne police station and had our prints taken (we brought Arden along, but she didn't have to have her prints taken for some weird reason). Two sets each, in case they weren't clear enough. We were also each given a cover letter explaining that these prints were "taken to the best of their ability". The officer said that the FBI could be "really picky" about the quality of the prints, and that sometimes they weren't able to read them, which would result in a rejected application. Which I found a bit... strange. But whatever. The officers were professional fingerprint-takers. How hard could this be?
We immediately mailed the fingerprint paperwork to an office in Ohio. A few weeks later, Ben got an e-mail that his prints had been received, checked and that he did not have an American criminal record. Because we had sent in our prints at the same time, we found it strange that mine hadn't been checked as well. After a few days, I made a long-distance call to Ohio, where I sat on hold for half an hour before talking to a helpful human. I was informed that my first set of prints was rejected due to "poor quality" and that they were in the process of checking my second set of prints. (Apparently
I was really bummed about my rejected fingerprints, as this was the last step (on our end) before we could actually submit our entire PR application. I poked around on some expat discussion boards about other peoples' experiences with the fingerprinting process, and discovered that many people have issues with this part of the application. Some people were able to get clear prints on the second try, but a few people had to send in multiple fingerprint applications (sometimes... five? ten?), failing every one of them. This was not what I wanted to hear.
Ink-on-paper fingerprints are really not reliable. Ink smudges easily, old people have disappearing fingerprints, and some people just have hard-to-read prints in general. Also, you have ten fingers, and if one of the prints is hard to read, they're all rejected. There are ways you can help the process (drinking lots of water, moisturising your fingertips, never playing a stringed instrument ever etc.) but ink-on-paper prints seem to be pretty fallible.
But hey, it was 2017, and fingerprints had been used to unlock pedestrian iPhones for a few years now - wasn't digital fingerprinting a thing? I looked it up, and indeed found many American companies that offered digital printing - a much more accurate process than ink-on-paper. For example, if one of the fingers didn't scan properly, the machine would immediately let you know, so you could re-do it and get a clean print. I mean, the things they think of these days! Straight out of a James Bond movie. Genius.
Oh, but here's the catch: in order to participate in digital fingerprinting (for any of the four Australian-approved fingerprinting companies), you need to go to one of their offices to have them scanned in-person. Because... I don't know - scanned fingerprints can't be transferred digitally, or they can be corrupted, or people can hack into systems easier, or I don't really know. But that's what I discovered, and I was flabbergasted. My choices were to either re-submit new sets of ink-on-paper fingerprints as many times as I needed (and at $50 per application and $40 per expedited international mail envelope and at least a few weeks of waiting for results, this was not a fun option), or somehow... visit one of the digital fingerprinting offices in the States to have my fingerprints done accurately in 5 minutes. Haha, right?
The latter option was actually possible. A week after I called the Ohio office to follow-up on my failed prints, Arden and I went to Michigan! The closest Australian-approved fingerprinting office was in Chicago, IL, which is about a three hour drive from my parents' house in Grand Rapids. Not super convenient, but it seemed like the best option for getting a quick and accurate result.
My dad drove me to Chicago on the third day of our visit (my mom was more than happy to watch Arden, of course! p.s. thanks parents), where... the first office we visited was actually closed (they're only open three days a week, which is not listed on their website, of course!). But thankfully, there was another office nearby, and there I was able to get my fingerprints taken accurately with the FBI's results e-mailed to me 24 hours later. Easy, boom, done.
If I hadn't visited the States when I did, who knows how long the fingerprinting process would have taken us, or how many 19th-century fingerprint forms I would have needed to submit? It could have been just one more application. Or, I could still be stuck on this step.
(Oh, and I should probably clarify - I do not have an American criminal record!)
The fun starts after you submit your application.
Fun facts about bridging visas: you can't leave the country on one. Unless you get a super-special bridging visa that can only be applied for three months prior to your intended travel (well, technically you can leave, but you might not be able to return to Australia). Which was a little stressful for us, as Ben's sister had recently gotten engaged (yay!!) and we weren't sure if we'd have our PR by the date of our late-April trip. But we bought our tickets anyway and planned on purchasing travel insurance in case.
Also you can't get a new mobile phone plan on a bridging visa, I discovered the hard way. Most phone plans here include the price of the phone in their monthly payments (it's like a rent-to-own kind of deal) and if you're not on a visa that's longer than the length of your phone plan (usually 2 years - and a bridging visa doesn't have a set amount of time), you have to buy a phone separately and do a month-to-month plan (aka it's pricey). They want to make sure people won't run off with unpaid phones, I guess. We went to three different companies to try and bypass the immigration status-check, but all three were consistent in requiring a visa status (after going through their happy lengthy sales pitches, of course). Just an FYI!
Some random thoughts:
Immigration and citizenship laws are... very strange.
We had to jump through a few silly hoops to get our PR, and we're from a very privileged country and situation. So I can't imagine what the process is like for people from less privileged conditions, or even for those who don't speak fluent English. The child health assessment mistake was pretty unacceptable, while the fingerprinting check (and the lack of a more... modern option) was very frustrating.
In my experience sharing our PR journey with friends and family, I've discovered that many people have misconceptions about requirements for visas and citizenship (for both the US and Australia, as well as other countries), and everyone has very different opinions about what's fair and what isn't. Choosing to belong to a new country is complicated, as is the ability to do so. It is what it is. That's all I'll say.
And oh, I almost forgot. If you've made it this far, congrats! The whole point of this blog post was to announce that...
we've just been granted our Permanent Residency!! And after only four months of waiting (including December, which is like half a month of workdays due to the holidays). That's pretty unheard of.
A huge thanks to everyone who helped us on our PR journey: family for the assistance with some of the paperwork details, friends for the support and encouragement, and fellow expats for sharing their stories and advice. Hopefully some of you found some of this interesting. Maybe even helpful, if you're hoping to apply for Australian PR yourselves.
"Now that you have PR, what's next?" you might ask.
I'll leave that for another blog post...
CK
