Any immigration agent will tell you that applying for a prospective marriage visa in Australia can be very tricky, as you need to meet a number of requirements. This isn’t to say that getting one is hard; not at all if your intentions for getting the visa are genuine and an immigration lawyers in Brisbane can certainly help you prove this. So what exactly do you need to prove when it comes to getting that visa?
Getting a visa isn’t as simple as just showing an agent the ring you intend to place on your spouse’s finger. One of the big hurdles a lot of people face when they apply for the prospective marriage visa is the first condition of the visa: proof of intent to marry. It’s not good enough to show your immigration agent the list of guests coming to your wedding. They can’t work with that and neither will the immigration department. Thankfully, there’s only really one of two things you need to prove you intend to marry. If you plan to get married outside of Australia, all you need is a letter from the person who will perform the wedding ceremony. However, if you plan to get married in Australia, you need to fill out the Notice of Intended Marriage form and give it to the person who will perform the ceremony, at least one month and no more than 18 months, before the actual ceremony.
The next big stumbling block when it comes to applying for the prospective marriage visa is proving that not only is your prospective spouse able to sponsor you (i.e. they’re one of the following: an Australian citizen, an Australian permanent resident, or an eligible New Zealand resident) but proving that you really do know them. The people who struggle with this section of the visa requirements are those who are marrying their spouse as part of an arranged marriage (and may not have met before you were both 18) and people who have met online. In the eyes of Australian law, and your immigration agent will confirm this, you need to prove that you intimately know the person you are marrying. This means that simply being arranged to marry or swapping photographs on the internet isn’t enough to successfully get a prospective marriage visa in Australia. Your immigration agent can help you prepare to prove that you genuinely know one another as two people intending to marry should.
Of course there’s more to successfully getting a visa in Australia than meeting the above requirements, however these are the major ones that applicants struggle to meet. For more information on the requirements of a prospective marriage visa, speak to an immigration agent.