Documentation

We finally managed to communicate with the lady from our adoption support agency this afternoon. She informed us that despite the allocation happening so quickly, we would need to update all of our supporting documentation for our original application – something we were hoping to avoid doing. Most of the documents are only considered valid for 12 months, and we would likely just pass the 12 month mark before we are approved fro travel.

Probably the longest part of the process is the police criminal record check – it can take 3 or more weeks to get the certificates back, so now that we know we have to get this re-done, we have to get on to it right away. They can’t just do an update – we have to go through the whole process again, including the fingerprint scans and the $175 fee, each!

Unfortunately, the Chatswood police station (where we are required to go for our fingerprint scans and to submit the forms), will only do fingerprinting on Saturday mornings between 9am and midday, so we were a bit annoyed that we didn’t find out we needed to get them done until Saturday afternoon. We have to wait an entire week and then the processing time for the certificates.

We spent the rest of the weekend preparing the visa forms for the Dept of Immigration. Nicol will be travelling on a Colombian passport and will require a visa to enter Australia. This will need to be issued by the Australian embassy in Santiago, Chile (there’s no embassy in Colombia), but we need to pay for the application here in Australia before sending the forms to Chile. She becomes a permanent Australian resident when she arrives in Australia, and we can then apply for citizenship for her.