The friggin' stupid visa...

If you think you can't read such a long blog, don't. Or only read the para with the word 'imbroglio' in its first sentence. I am not going to share a happy bloggable event with anyone but my family. But if you like criticism and cynicism, keep reading. And don't get critical of me later. Because one did.

The FAULT is the Univsersity's, if we don't go there. Yes, it's entirely THEIR fault. You can't talk me out of it.

We are taking extreme pains in handling the visa and acccommodation formalities for all the 14 of us and it's all because the University guys are behaving like us, and we like them.

To those of you who are stumbling over this blog, I start with the initiation of Professor Hema Sharda, who had taken responsibility and pains in taking a few internships from IITs to the University of Western Australia, that's in Perth, a city on the West coast of Australia.

She started, and it took around 2-3 days for Hema 'Shards' and Pulkit Double to sort it all out and short-list the candidates. There were some selected with half funding, and some with full funding. Funny I had never heard of half-funded interns until then. Full was Aus $4k. I was selected with half. And Leo the other half. Later Srikant dropped because he got an offer for an intern in the University of New Mexico. He thinks he is lucky and happy he had dropped out of it. Later again, Anagha joined us. She had applied privately and got full funded biomed intern.

Then Hema came to the campus again. All the ones who got selected were in the process of applying for visas by then. I had taken the responsibility of representing the group of students, whenever required. When she came to the campus again, she offered two more internships to Gargi and Amit. We are now 14 together. 12 boys and 2 girls. 11 from Elec and 3 from Mech. I don't want to list their names now. Because it's a big list. Anyway, we are 14 now.

We applied for Visas, after taking pains in contacting Mancomp n times for doubts and suggestions, asking them to come to the campus to check the applications, calling up n Travel and Medical Insurance companies to find the cheapest insurance for a period of 3 months, going to and contacting TT Services only to find out that all they did was dumbly forwarded the applications to the Australian High Commission for a SC of 450 bucks, contacting the University Admin guys and our respective project guides to tell them we were applying for Occupational Trainee Visas.


A few days after we apply for the OTVisas, we are all called and e-mailed by this Reshma Joseph from the Australian High Commission saying they need something called Nomination Approval letter from the DIMA. If you are confused like hell, look at the image now. There is something called Nomination to be done. I will now explain what is supposed to be done when a student applies for an OTVisa.

If you still have no enthu in going on with this post, you can click on the little red button on the top right.

After the student is granted an internship at a Univ, the Univ must at first send him the Offer Letter. This is official now. The offer letter is I-20 if the Univ is in the USA. After the offer letter is sent, the Univ must fill up a Nomination form per internee, and submit it to the DIMA, that is the Department of Indigenous and Multicultural Affairs. After the DIMA in Perth takes its own sweet time ( TWO weeks) to process the Nomination forms, it issues what is called a Nomination Approval letter to the University per internee. The copies of these letters are what the internees now need to start applying for an Occupational Trainee Visa, along with the other documents. After the internees apply for OTVisas, the Australian High Commission takes its own sweet time (id est, FOUR weeks) for processing the Visa applications, though Dianne of UWA thinks of it as rubber-stamping in a minute.

The DIMA and the Australian High Commission say they are strangers to each other and must remain so. No communication. The High Comm also says no communication between DIMA and us. We have to talk only to the Univ.

Now let's come to our imbroglio. We applied for Visas on 14 March. On 17 March we get mails and calls from Reshma, asking for these Nomination Approval letters. We now confuse Nomination letters with these Approval letters. We tell the Univ they need these letters. Now Dianne tells us to apply for Tourist Visas. Funny how it happens. We tell her we already applied for OTVisas. Rob of UWA tells us after a few days that they started the Nomination process, which was supposed to be done in our childhood. This is where everything stalls.

We are here now. It's been a month since the Univ washed their hands off the Nomination. Can't contact the DIMA - it's not advisable the High Comm says. Mail the univ about approval letters - they reply about accommodation or not at all. Or they say they are disinclined to contact the DIMA again, because they are a Govt. agency. Mail the DIMA secretly, no reply. Call the High Comm - all they do is put you on hold for five times, and even if you get to Reshma, she tells you they will still take their own time for Visa processing. Ask her if we can cancel OTVisas and apply for Tourist Visas (that are supposed to be less time-consuming ), and she says we don't fall in that category and we can't do so.

We are now desperate. All of us are thinking of backup interns now. We are going to tell DKP the scenario so that we can get other interns if we lose this because of late visas. We keep postponing our flight dates from 8 to 11 to 15 to 20 now. It is highly probable that we go next year, because no way we are gonna get visas this summer.

Now, if you think it might have been our mistake not attaching the approval letter copies with the visa applications, you are wrong. The list of supporting documents had no mention of these letters in it. The agent from Mancomp knew zuch about it too. The Univ? It didn't even know a bit about Nomination until we told them, let alone Nomination Approval letters.

I will tell you when we get our passports back, and also if we got them with or without visas. Farewell.