We've got a five-step plan to enter Australia on a student visa during Covid. 14 months in and still not in Australia, this is how it is going…
I would like to move back to Australia. That’s no secret. It has been over a year now since Down Under have closed their borders to, well, literally to everybody. More than 30.000 Australians around the world are still stranded due to the strict arrival caps in their home country. So, what are the chances for Dan and me to move to Australia anytime soon in these crazy Covid times aye?
What started out as a bit of a challenge has become, in Covid times, a seemingly never-ending story of delays, set-backs, change of plans, disappointments and slight beacons of hope. It also has been a 14-month wait so far, including five steps, some of them hurdles, to overcome in order to get to Australia. Man, it sounds like we really, really wanna go!
Here are the steps, we've been taking:
Getting a PhD offer and funding approved in the first place
Waiting an unknown amount of time for visa approval
Funding - that's a funny one...
Applying for a travel exemption which is taking its time
Catching a flight (ironically that might yet to be the hardest one)
Well, we played with the idea of moving back to Australia in 2016 when Dan started his university degree in Liverpool. After around a year of living in the North of the UK, we were quite sure we were going to move somewhere else after his graduation in 2020. Our well-informed decision was made after we had checked out several wakeparks as well university cities where Dan could do a PhD in his field – both facilities can't be not too far apart from each other, of course. Work life balance is important aye! So, the best option for pleasing our wakeboard itch as well as Dan’s desire to work for a good university was Melbourne. Melbourne cablepark with its two cables, clockwise and anti-clockwise, looks just as amazing as the biomedical engineering faculty at the University of Melbourne sounds. So, we tried our luck and Dan applied for a PhD course in March 2020 – just weeks before New Zealand and Australia shut their borders to the world. Great timing. By that time, we had no idea that their countries’ policies of stopping people to enter (– quite frankly, it has never been easy to receive a working visa for Australia –) will be set for years to come.
Our five-step plan to enter Australia
#1 PhD and funding application
First things first. Our migration project started with the idea of moving to OZ a few years ago and got a bit realer in March last year, when Dan applied for a PhD course in Melbourne. The application process from start to finish took around four months. After the first step of getting the PhD placement was done, funding had to be approved, too. Doing a PhD in Melbourne would be amazing, but only if it’s a paid position. Uni costs in OZ are sky-high – we could have never ever afforded that. So, after another couple of months waiting, we also got that approved. I think we’re talking July here now. Not a too long wait after all. Keeping mind that we had planned being in New Zealand by now, our lives in 2020 turned out a bit different than anticipated though (so did everyone else’s I suppose). Anyway, we’re happy as a hippo that the first steps had been done without toooo much of a struggle.
#2 Australian visa application and a never-ending wait for some
Since borders were still closed and Australia failed in any way to arrange a return of students any time soon, there was no way that we were going to go to OZ anytime soon as well. Before entering Australia, in any case you gotta have a visa first anyway. So, going by the uni’s recommendation, we applied in September last year in anticipation of getting a student visa approved within two months (two months is the average process time stated on the official government websites). Well, that was all a big pile of bullshit – we'd been waiting for eight long months to get it approved, finally, while we were not being able to speak to any kind of a case officer or whatsoever. We were also not able to ask someone to look at our file just in case information, documents or similar were being missing. I mean after a few months you start thinking that something must have gone wrong with our application. The lack of communications was daunting. When Dan called up asking for a status update or a rough time frame when he can expect an answer, they basically said no idea. You get it when you get it. Or, you don’t. Brilliant. That was very helpful.
It made me wonder how long people actually do put their lives on hold for something like this? I’m really curious. Well, I read about cases where some had to wait two years for a decision on their student visa for Australia. Two years! Without any kind of information on the question if or if not it might get approved. Two years living a life in the hope for a big move, that might never happen. Pure mindfuck if you ask me. For all we know in our case, the application could have gone missing or ended up in the wrong pile etc. You just don’t know which means your life is basically put on hold for an uncertain amount of time. On hold for two years for some? I mean how can one plan with that kinda vague information? That's just mean.
#3 Funding yay, but nay – big hurdle
After eight long months, finally, we got our visa approved, which means that Dan could start his PhD online. That also meant, foolishly we were thinking, that with starting his PhD, the payment would kick in, so that we actually would be able to afford living abroad while Dan is working remotely on his PHD at the Uni of Melbourne. Boi, were we wrong! The funding does kick in indeed, but cannot be paid to an overseas bank account or for example a relative’s account in Australia. This got me wonder again: What do people do if they don't have enough savings to support themselves overseas while studying at an Australian university? Good on us, we managed to save a bit of money over the last four years and a half in Liverpool, so that we still can afford to wait a little bit longer (not forever) unit Australia lets us in which bring me to the next hurdle: the travel exemption.
#4 Travel exemption and another wait
Australia offers travel exemptions for compassionate reasons as well as for people whose working skills are on their shortlist and who are actively needed in the country such as doctors, nurses, researchers etc. So, that’s Dan. Doing research in a biomedical engineering department of the Uni of Melbourne being funded by one of the government organisations, we supposed we did have quite good chances of getting that type of exemption approved. I doubted it will be any time soon considering the Australian admin time frame of our visa application. Although the official government page says that such an exemption will be issued within seven working days, for some reason we’ve been waiting for four weeks without any sign of an answer. Again, you cannot speak to anyone, no case officer or service staff. No one would tell you what’s up with your case, why it is stuck or whether need any further information from your side. Also, the website stated if you put in a duplicate application to increase your chances, the whole process might just get delayed. Kinda get that, however, it would be nice if the official processing times at least every now and again would be honoured by the Australian government admin system. We waited a few days longer and decided to upload a duplicate application anyway and attached a begging note to look at our first enquiry we put up to please, please pretty please make a decision. Drums… That did work! We got the exemption. Hurray.
#5 Final hurdle: Catching a flight
Finally, the last and most expensive hurdle is yet to come: booking and catching a flight to Australia. As some might know, boarding a plane to Australia is no piece of cake these days. Reading about Australia’s quarantine policy, it is the strictest and most restricted one there is on this planet. I don’t even exaggerate. Since it is highly underfunded they lack of thousands and thousands of quarantine spaces for citizens and visa holders who want to enter Australia. At the moment the country lets in roughly 3.000 people a week.
What happens is airlines let passengers book their tickets as usual (with a Covid safe capacity for the cabin of course), but as every passenger has to go through a 14-day hotel quarantine wherever they enter Australia, the number of passengers need to match the number of available spaces in the quarantine facilities within the city of destination – and that might change from one day to another. If there’s not enough spaces available, but flight tickets have got already sold, the airlines will have to bump off a certain number of passengers of that respective flight. Sometimes that happens just 24 hours before the passengers would board. In rare cases people get bumped off their flight as little as three hours before the flight depending on the airline. And who are the ones who get kicked off? Customers with tickets on the rather cheaper end. Obviously, the airlines need to make their flight worthwhile and won’t necessarily bump off their premium or business class paying customers, but chose those booking economy. That means for us, our flights just got a hell of lot more expensive if we really want to minimise the risk of getting bumped off last minute. Bit mad really.
Our dream of moving to Australia went from fairly hard (getting a PhD, visa and relocating) to a risky expensive marathon-like super-duper level of extreme patience, persistence and stamina. On the one hand I’m exhausted of the whole process which is taking more than a whole year now and yet on the other hand I am so thrilled that we’re finally looking at the very last hurdle of boarding a plane to Australia on September 2.
Never-ending story to be continued… Stay tuned! I’ll let you know if we make it.
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