Visas for Fijian Males to Australia

When I first met Chita, one of his friends worked at the New Zealand High Commission and told me that there was no way they would give him a visitor's visa as he had no income and had not worked in a resort for five years. Instead he had gone bush and was working on the family plantation. It was a tricky time for us - we had just met, we were keen to see each other a lot and in the first year I visited Fiji 7 times and spent every scrap of savings I had. I bought him a mobile phone to maintain contact and he also learnt how to send texts.
We then set up a small business. We followed the six steps of setting up a business in Suva and with all the documentation at our fingertips we applied for a short term business visa with me sponsoring his expenses. It was refused, as he had insufficient income - my status of sponsorship was not even considered. That was in 2005.
Chita had the shop to build so he wasn't too worried. I could still visit Fiji on holiday breaks being a teacher so we decided to put all our energy into setting up a business in Fiji.
At the end of 2006 Chita was playing rugby and was part of a team chosen to represent Fiji at Fiji Day in Sydney. He had lost his phone and I hadn't been back so we had no way of contacting each other on an impromptu basis - we had a committed phone call to someone's phone in the village every Monday night at 7 pm. I paid for his ticket, booked a ticket for myself to Sydney with a girlfriend. We turn up to Fiji day and he is nowhere to be seen. We ask friendly Fijians if the team from Votua had arrived. No, no, they will be here by one o'clock or one-thirty. We eat, we wander, we watch the dancing and singing. The teams arrive. I am directed to the adjacent park and asked the coach where Chita was. He and the boys are coming in a van= they are running late. We went back to get a seat for the game. The game starts - 10 minutes passes - no Chita, 20 minutes passes- no Chita. I walk onto the ground where all the Fijians were sitting watching the game and called out - Does anyone know where Esita Tubuna is? A sea of blank faces presented itself. I ask again a little more loudly. A young Fijian guy puts up his hand and tells me: He is back in Fiji. The visa for the team was refused.
Little did I know that this story hit Votua within 24 hours. A lady walking around the oval YELLING for Esita Tubuna. His mother found it amusing - as Fijian never raise their voice. What kind of outlandish creature was asking for her son, who had told her repeatedly he would never have a girlfriend again and was never going to marry.
I cried buckets. Went out for dinner and wept through my bowl of prawns, drank a lot and suddenly felt marginally better. I spent Sunday on my own travelling around Sydney Harbour on and off ferries still weeping in glorious sunshine - going why can't I ring him? Why can't I talk to him? I wrote a ten page letter and posted it. Then managed to talk to him at our appointed time on a Monday night back in Tassie and he says - don't worry!!!!!
My second attempt at a visa was a visitor's visa last year. We had been together for two years, we have a business in Fiji which is not making much money, I wanted to introduce him to my family and he gets refused again for all the same reasons and my sponsorship was again refused. I was gutted and devastated. I had presumed everything and provided supporting documentation and they ignored it all. I did not want to be around happy family. My mother thought she was being supportive by telling me to get over it. I'm sorry mum but this hurts. My sisters were instantly immigration agents who knew it all, and thought it was their right to tell me- that he had had no chance of getting a visitor's visa as they had contacts, and they knew better. Not what I needed.
My third attempt at a visa has been applying for a prospective spouse visa. Why didn't we get married? Because of the living 12 months continuously clause. I tried to live in Fiji last year and find a job so I could get a work permit but there was nothing available and what was available was slave labour.
Our migration agent suggested there were fewer hurdles for the prospective spouse visa so we went with that.
Its been a gruelling and taxing time for me emotionally, physically and mentally. I am a Type A personality who gets things done and I have been constantly thwarted by Fiji.
Even handing over the business to friends is huge for me, as I would love to be there getting a bakery-cafe set up and meeting heaps of people but instead I have had to relinquish that dream and prioritize. I need Chita in my life. He needs to learn Australian ways or this mixed marriage will go nowhere. We have more opportunities here, and I have to postpone my bakery-cafe for 2-5 years realistically while we get ourselves into a financially stable position. Boring but necessary.
So now you know why Chita has not been to Australia. Fijian males between 20-45 have great difficulty getting a visitor's visa. Fijians are put into a high risk category for overstaying which when you apply for visas you wonder how they could think that, as they can't get in the bloody country. I am with Rupert Murdoch who in his Boyer's lectures has stated that Australia needs to lift its restrictive immigration policies and build a working nation..... I agree wholeheartedly!

Hanging in there!

I had a serious chat to Chita yesterday. He is hanging in there. He like me is starting to think is this ever going to happen. I have paid for a migration agent - how can they not believe our relationship is genuine. How do we prove that our relationship is genuine. We don't have phone accounts other than vodafone. We don't write letters to each other anymore. I talk to him every couple of days on the phone and send a text or two. He has no computer -he cannot send emails.
Its the evidence according to Australian standards that is killing us. We don't have a home in Fiji - yet. We don't have a phone line, or electricity bills or water bills together (anyway in Fiji water is free)
I could compile a whole load of papers but it still doesn't prove that we love and care for each other. Chita has been interviewed but I have not. I hope that the sacrifice of moving to Hobart, to get a full time job, and live with a friend has paid off. It has cost me my health - a wriggly worm maybe lodged in my intestines - but not for long - a dose of vermox is going to shoo him out.
I keep saying patience is something I thought I had but it fades with inaction. Luckily Chita has something to do. Take a form we have already submitted, fill it out again and take a van ride to Suva and back and submit it. Please God, let this be the last thing they ask for.
Flights are going up. I am saving madly. I cannot afford to go to Fiji to go and get him. He will have to make his own way from Nadi to Sydney and then Melbourne. I will meet him there for the weekend and show him the sights and eat fabulous food together.
I have never been this powerless in my life. Our future lies in the hands of an office clerk, who may be having a good day or a bad day. He or she may feel like doing this properly or dismissing our case to the bottom of the pile. Who knows? December is looming and I know Chita is getting nervous. I am hiding my nerves and thinking he will be here in a couple of weeks. Why the hell not?
I told him in September last year I could not continue living apart. I have a partner who is invisible to my family and friends, who knows nothing of my life and who has never visited my country. I can't live like this.
Please Kevin Rudd ease up on the restrictions on immigration. Even Rupert Murdoch told you so.
I need him here. We need to have a life together or what's the point of it all?

The last month has been an ordeal. I have been tired, sluggish, exhausted and lethargic to the max. I have had difficulty walking from my car to my office. I have had breathless attacks and palpitations. By Melbourne cup day I was thinking there is no way I can go to the school sports as I will not be able to walk around the oval with the students. I had tried to get a blood test the day before but the nurse could not find a vein. I presented myself again to my Russian doctor and was sent off to Pathology where they have fine needles and its no problem to get blood out of anyone. I then had a chest xray making sure I parked as close as possible to each venue so that I did not have to walk far. I was so buggared by those two activities that I drove home, went to sleep and woke up in time to see the Melbourne Cup and miss at least eight phone calls. I thought it was a colleague reminding me of a meeting at the Royal Botanical Gardens that afternoon but oh no, it was my doctor ringing. She had even rung my mum, who rang me to tell me to ring her back. I was ordered straight to hospital with a blood count of 39.How had I been walking around. Why had I not fainted and collapsed while walking or driving? Dunno. I am old Irish stock on both sides of the family and my father is surviving Parkinsons so I hopefully inherited some of his tough old boot strength. Into hospital I go. I order a taxi which takes me to emergency. I line up behind a drugged out skateboard who needed a band aid on his knee and when he did not get one big enough decided to throw his skateboard at the unbreakable windows, but the only thing that hurt was the reverberating noise. Security was called so he raced off, giving us all the finger. By this stage I am definitely feeling fragile. The nurse finds my paperwork and ushers me into emergency where I promptly burst into tears. Shock or terror or both. I was laid on a trolley and the bloody awful blood tests began. There was also the issue of inserting a canula into a non-existent vein but I really don't want to think about it. I had oxygen. I waited for the doctor who kept talking about 'internal bleeding'. I am thinking 'No I have no sign of that!' I just feel awful pretty much all the time. Then the brain worked and went, blood loss ie internal bleeding. I had no sign of it - no pain in my ovaries, no blood in my stools, no gut ache. I was a mystery to them all. I waited for family to call but there was no mobile reception in the the emergency department so I just watched the goings on around me. I heard a man next door with chest pain who had recently had a double b-pass and then I think I closed my eyes for a rest.
I was taken up to the ward and told a blood transfusion was next. I had to sign a paper saying that I accepted the blood as there is a slight chance I could have a reaction to it. By this stage I did not care. Feel better. What's that? I have been feeling so crappy for so long. I had visions that I was permanently going to be in this crappy unwell state - but no fear - blood makes it better. I am 0+ common as muck and I thank those people out there who give blood; as I feel so much better now.
I was kept in hospital for a week, and starved, as they had plans for me - a gastroenteroscopy and a colonoscopy which kept getting postponed. Drinks and jelly were my lot. How I looked forward to raspberry, orange or lemon jelly. Down to the day operations area, lying on the trolley, pale and fragile, and the anaethetist refuses to sedate me saying my blood count was still too low. I had endured a bowel clean of thunderous proportions for nothing. It was postponed a week. Bloody hell! Cannot say enough about the kindness and care from nursing staff as I had never been in hospital that long before. I was taking the least amount of pills compared to other patients and was just resting. They were all shake, rattling and rolling every night at pill dispensing time. I had a puff of my puffer and a drug to help control food acid in case I had a gastric ulcer of worse a stomach cancer. I knew I had no pain so I felt safe.
I wasn't looking forward to being knocked out, but it was quick. One minute I am looking at the anaethetist saying' I feel funny' and then I roll over and the surgeon is talking to me, and then I am gone. I wake up in recovery. The weird thing was my hearing came back first, and I woke up talking in response to a conversation amongst the nurses, then my brain kicked in. My initial response was 'amazing'. Its over and I am feeling alright... Yippee. A two hour wait and I see the surgeon who tells me ' No we did not find anything'.
I spend the weekend relaxing and then receive a phone call from a friend in Fiji who had just been back to the states, and had a blood test for a parasitic worm that lodges in the intestine. I also received another call from friends who had lived in Jamaica who suggested the same thing.
So now I am off to have another blood test - for this rapid blood loss - and yes it maybe caused by a parasitic worm in my intestine. Lovely!
In the meantime my beloved Chita in Fiji has been struggling through some issues himself. We are handing over the cafe to Fabi and Dege for two years. In return they get a bure on the beach and will renovate, maintain and upgrade the buildings. We will be setting up two businesses - they are having an art business and we will run the food business. I am never having partners again- the only partner I want is my husband to be. He has not spelt out to them that he will be in Australia for two years so they think he is around to work the business and be a partner. He had a meeting last week with them over a bowl of kava to sort out what is going on.
The visa - what can I say? Its been a bloody never ending story and I cannot believe it has taken this long and we still do not have a verdict. Chita had his interview in Suva on October 21st and then my migration agent received a request for more information. I rang and asked for clarification of when - the last six months or the last four years.
His response - this is highly irregular.
I had been trying to tell him how the Embassy in Suva worked but he would not believe me.
His next response was even more inappropriate - I am sorry Amanda but I think you are a genuine candidate but he is not.
Who bloody well asked you for your opinion, when you know nothing. I was flabbergasted.
I then reiterated that the Embassy in Suva loved lots of paper, loved to ask for more and more of it, and that it had nothing to do with Chita.
I asked him to send an email asking for clarification. A week passed and he did not ring. I rang him on the Friday and he did not answer his mobile but got his wife to answer. He's busy. Ring Monday.
Time is passing. I am reliving my visitor visa application of last year. It got to November and the applications for visa closes. Then the Embassy closes for Christmas and then it will be New Year before anything happens. I just do not want to repeat last Christmas on my own - with family, saying 'get over it, you knew it was going to happen, they don't let Fijians into Australia easily you know' And when did they all become Immigration department agents I ask myself.
Anyhow I applied pressure to the greek agent with a volcanic response. My sister in law decided to call him and ask him if he had sent the email. He hung up on her.
Great weekend that was. I sent an email authorising her on my behalf as he never seems to listen to me, and never pays any attention to what I say about the embassy in Suva. I have applied three times already; I am not a novice.
Anyhow rang him who must be obeyed and never questioned on the Monday and he was ready to pull the pin. I will not work through someone else. I managed to calm him down and get him to confirm that he would call the embassy and find out.
I waited Tuesday, Wednesday and then Thursday to make sure.
Amanda it is really difficult to call the embassy in Suva - you were right. They do want lots of paperwork. Yes the embassy does stop taking applications in November and yes they do close for Christmas and New Year.
A cheap victory. I just want Chita here.
The Friday before I wilted,and wandered off to hospital, I copied all the phone account, my text to Chita, his texts to me, a sample huge phone bill and my bank statements - with something actually in my account. The following Monday I dragged my tired body to my sister in laws work where she scanned and emailed them to he who must be obeyed.
The next day I was in hospital - so not bad. I have just had an email today asking for one more form which we have already filled out, but who cares lets do it again ( maybe it was misplaced) and Chita is picking up a copy from a friend of ours in Votua who has a computer and printer. Yippee!
We are at the last stage. He could be given the thumbs up in the next couple of weeks. All I want for Christmas is Esita Tubuna in Tassie.
I rang him today and he was flat. If I don't get the visa - we will think of something else. What? I can't get a job in Fiji. He can't get a job anywhere else. What hope have we got?
He has to come to Australia. Its the only way to give ourselves freedom and lots of options. I will not give up. We are so close I can feel it.
I am wishing, and hoping - no intestinal worm for me, and a little stamp in a kind, gentle Fijian male's passport - which will bring a slow beaming smile.
Santa are you listening?