Moving to Australia: Part Eight

Previously in this series….

In Part One you have the idea.
In Part Two you looked at the various Visa options.
In Part Three you looked at using a MARA Migration Agent.
In Part Four you agreed the basis of your application.
In Part Five you needed to Prove It!
In Part Six you looked at taking the dog or cat.
In Part Seven you put in your application.

Moving to Australia – Part 8

Part eight is the hardest part of all. Waiting!

The whole process is now pretty much out of your hands. It has now become a waiting game. It is a strange period to get through. If you have a migration agent they will probably be able to give you a good idea of how long you will need to wait. Ours told us about 10 months.

It will be a strange period, however long it takes. It’s almost as if the life goes on hold. How do you get through it?

You could try meditating…..

meditating Moving to Australia Part Eight

Waiting

I did two things. Firstly, I signed up for an e-mail service provided by the Australian authorities which is supposed to give you a view of how the queue is moving. Basically, you send a blank e-mail to The Australian Government Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, or DIMA, and that they will send you a weekly update.

I am a little reluctant to give the details here for reasons I’ll explain in a minute. But then that just means you’ll have to go searching for it. So at the time of writing, you could read about it on Update: This page has now been removed by the Australian Government of the immi website and the email address to send a blank to was aspc.processing@immi.gov.au

Basically, the service works by telling you which applications they are opening and looking at. So in my example, our application was received by the Australian government on the third of August 2006. So our first e-mail from them, at that time, might have said something like “we are currently looking at applications received third November 2005″.

You can see how with this example, that if the government opens applications at the same rate they are received, then they will be likely opening mine in about 10 months time. Unfortunately, what happened next was that by January 2007 the message was “we are currently looking at applications received 18th December 2005″.

I think at one stage I calculated that our application would be opened in about five years time. It was very depressing. But at the end of the day, it was also totally inaccurate. I am sure the system has good intentions and maybe it has been improved since I last used it. But the reality was the first assessment by our migration agent of 10 months was almost accurate to the day.

So my advice would be not to sign up for this service. There is something depressing about getting this weekly update. A bit like if you were to weigh yourself every day or check your bank balance constantly. It’s just not good for you. I say just get on with your life and wait for some news.

But the second thing I did was far more useful. I believe you can create your own future. I believe it is possible to get the cogs of the universe to move in your favour simply with the power of positive thought. So I created a statement, a mantra, a belief or you can simply call it a wish, that I repeated every day. Here is what it said….

“I live in Brisbane, as a permanent resident with my wife and daughter, in a four bedroomed single storey house of modern construction complete with a swimming pool. The house is built in a shape which allows for a large shaded patio area overlooking the pool with pleasing scenic views beyond”.

Am I mad? Maybe. But I am also living in Australia.

Not only am I living in Australia, but I am living in a house that can be described exactly as above. And I bought it through the Internet without ever having seen it.

I can honestly say, hand on heart, that I do not believe I would be here, now, today, if I hadn’t have created the reality in my mind first in a way I have just described. I started this post by saying “The whole process is now pretty much out of your hands”. That is not 100% true.

Belief helps too.

Go to Moving to Australia Part 9

For a full chronological list and brief description of all the posts in this series about how I moved to Australia, please visit my page How to Move to Australia.