Catch 22

[aggienaut]

Here's a very kafka-esque thing. In support of the application for the fiancee visa, they want me to file a "notice of intended marriage." This NOIM requires me to specify a date within the next 18 months we intend to have our wedding. But the fiancee visa has a minimum processing time of 23 months. So in order to apply for the visa to get married I have to swear we intend to get married sooner than the visa can possibly allow us to. 🤷‍♂️



(unrelated pictures, from the Geelong Waterfront a few weeks ago)


Also, this visa application has an aspect that's a lot more annoying than the gathering of mountains of obscure information that hte other visas required -- I need to chase around my friends to get them to make "statutory declarations" ("stat decs") attesting that Cristina and my relationship is true and genuine, but this stat dec needs to be done a certain way on a certain form witnessed by one of a certain set of kinds of people, and all done exactly right. So far I've had two friends do it only to have the lawyers say it wasn't done right and another friend who's been telling me she'll do it "definitely tomorrow" for over two weeks. I hate that requires both extensively nagging my friends and also being delayed by other people. ):

Edit edit: another neighbor is willing to sign one for me but her printer is out of ink, so I offered to print it and bring it over but my wifi has been down for four days (I also spent hours with the telecom about this this morning) and apparently my computer won't talk to my printer without the wifi working so I can't print it, at this point I want to scream and throw something out the window.

Update 12 hours later: internet (inexplicably) functional again, printer worked a few hours ago to print out the one copy of the form for the neighbor. Have an appointment in the morning to meet with a registered celebrant to sign the NOIM and.... my printer now inexplicably refuses to print!! I've turned both the computer and printer off and on again, run the troubleshooter (it detects an error but can't identify anything about it), manually checked every setting I could think of. Arrghhh why is EVERYTHING going wrong about this??!??!

Comments

[waitingman.livejournal.com]

Love that... "If you don't get married, we won't let your fiancée enter the country" "Okay, we'll get married in 6 months" "You can't do that, she won't be here & we won't let her in because she's not married"

This place really is being run by General Scheisskopf...

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

See also I've added some update to this entry as new and exciting things continue to go wrong >:(

[waitingman.livejournal.com]

Nice photos too!!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

I can understand it in principle, but it seems like even someone faking such a thing could get this done.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I'm really curious what fake applications end up looking like

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!
Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ (https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=303).

[adafrog.livejournal.com]

{{{hugs}}}

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks! (:

[iddewes]

That is absolutely crazy about the visa! I guess it used to take less time to be processed and they haven’t updated it?? Maybe? And, arg on the other stuff too! Wishing you guys all the best and hope you can see each other in person again soon!!!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah that's my assumption, that this used to make sense and hasn't been updated since it ceased to make sense

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Somebody with an extreme sadistic streak created those rules. It's totally absurd and of course they want it like that to keep out as many scary foreigners as possible. I hope you can find your way through the labyrinth.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah the official fear of foreigners is really ridiculous. Like the US is supposed to be hard to get into but from everything I've heard it's nowehre near as hard as it is to get in here. The equivalent visa for the US costs about $500 instead of $13,000 and takes like six months to process I think instead of 20-30.

[maju01.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the stat decs!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It's frustrating because it's not in my direct control. I don't stress about things that are entirely in my control but when I have to depend on other people coming through on things it definitely stresses me out

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

god that would drive me crazy!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

It's really frustrating!!!!!

[furzicle.livejournal.com]

Would it make you feel a little less alone in the world if I mentioned that a certain OF has a printer/scanner/copier that is now refusing to work, with the error message "Automatic Document Feeder [doesn't work]" Nevermind that the automatic document feeder was not in use, has never been in use, and every other function has been functioning as planned. In solidarity with its own error message, the machine refused to work. After trying all the usual fixes, going out to try to buy a new one, and plenty of frustrated comments, OF turned the machine on its side and banged it a couple of times and...voila! it has begun to work.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Such sauce!