depending from which country your GF is from ICA may or may not even consider a DP or LTVPTamarin wrote: Yours aye
Tamarin wrote:Thanks for your comments ecureilx. I've read most of the posts on this subject and whilst some are helpful, most are ambiguous or contradictory and, as you hint at, it all seems a bit of a lottery. That's why I thought an agent might be able help. The money might be well spent
So you have an anecdote of one guy in which you either A) don't know all of the details or B) he committed immigration fraud with ICA? You come here asking what to do and don't like the answer given. Whether it is keyboard warriors in this thread, or you had run the forum search to find a dozen other threads asking similar questions in the past few years, you'd have received the same answer.Tamarin wrote:I'm British - been a PR here for the last 9 years. Worked & lived in Australia for 3 of those years - informed the appropriate authorities - I'm still a PR. My GF is Australian but of Arab descent.
It's a few years back now and rules may have changed, but a friend (now married) managed to get his Thai GF linked somehow to his EP, which imade it easier for her to come and go. He used an agent - cost him s$1k. He's now working in the US, so I thought I'd try this forum for advice.. Shouldn't have bothered - keyboard warriors!
I'll just cancel my membership - you lot should cancel your membership to the human race.
Keyboard warriors? On the basis of one unproven anecdotal circumstance, you choose to ignore the vast body of evidence regarding passes and instead, shoot the messenger. Brilliant!Tamarin wrote:I'm British - been a PR here for the last 9 years. Worked & lived in Australia for 3 of those years - informed the appropriate authorities - I'm still a PR. My GF is Australian but of Arab descent.
It's a few years back now and rules may have changed, but a friend (now married) managed to get his Thai GF linked somehow to his EP, which imade it easier for her to come and go. He used an agent - cost him s$1k. He's now working in the US, so I thought I'd try this forum for advice.. Shouldn't have bothered - keyboard warriors!
I'll just cancel my membership - you lot should cancel your membership to the human race.
An interesting overview but I found it also a bit funny. The author laboriously builds up for a good half of this lengthy paper the tension and the image of the uber-hyper highly sophisticated surveillance/invigilation system to end up with examples of screening the porn from the url addresses and racial remarks from the blogs/chats. Or that to better handle SARS it should had been noticed there were some earlier unexplained lung infections in China.zzm9980 wrote:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... ance_state
It's also based on anecdotes from a few years ago. You don't think ICA could be using it to find out details about candidates for various passes, PRs, or Citizenships?x9200 wrote:An interesting overview but I found it also a bit funny. The author laboriously builds up for a good half of this lengthy paper the tension and the image of the uber-hyper highly sophisticated surveillance/invigilation system to end up with examples of screening the porn from the url addresses and racial remarks from the blogs/chats. Or that to better handle SARS it should had been noticed there were some earlier unexplained lung infections in China.zzm9980 wrote:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... ance_state
I think the thing here is that the rules and forms are pretty clear. The state's intention is you DIY it, and there's pretty good anecdotal evidence that using an agent is positively held against you. An agent has no 'special knowledge'. In fact I'd vouch no agent understands the rules better, or provides 'advantage' vs the collective knowledge on this forum and using a DIY approach. If I were ICA and I received a visa application from a long-time PR, that came via an agent, I'd be asking what's so complicated, why the agent, what in the application might be being 'burnished' (aka 'polished up')?Tamarin wrote:PS: I wasn't looking for an agent to buy my way past the rules, jump the queue, get into another lane, try to bend the rules, or commit any form of fraud. I was asking if anyone knew of, or could recommend an agent that could save me all the hassle of finding out what was possible within the rules. The friend I referred to, I believe, simply did the same. I'll write to him and get the full story.
I can't quite understand why asking a simple question on whether anyone could recommend a good agent resulted in the type of replies I received.
I was in the same shoes as your GF, but repeat travelling from London to be with my then GF, now wife, in New York. I was travelling under the Visa Waiver Scheme. After quite some while, maybe 8 months, the occasional question from USCBP turned suddenly into being taken away for '2ndary inspection', which I'd liken to an occasionally polite interrogation. At which point I was allowed in but told 'Get a visa or you're not coming back'. That is what I did, and I look back on it now as the US having a way to vet all my credentials at their leisure, rather than me requiring them to make an on-the-spot decision each time I tuned up at JFK/EWR. That of course requires that you have the credentials to get a visa. And as has been discussed before here, Singapore has no effective 'Multiple entry GF/BF visa'. She's either a tourist, (who in aggregate spend 2.5 days here on an average visit), or she is at the least your de facto spouse.Tamarin wrote:My GF comes and goes at the moment on a tourist visa. She never stays more than 30 days anyway, but the more often she does it, the more often she gets questioned. I, on the other hand, go back and forth to Oz with no questions and no probs* - so you can see where that's going to lead and where I don't particularly want to go.
ICA are not going to tell you anything that is not on their website, or application forms. I.e. they're not going to help you make your application more likely to be approved.Tamarin wrote:Thanks however for putting me squarely in the picture - I was thinking of taking a trip down to Lavender to enquire personally, but that also now seems will be a waste of time.
that's what I meant and seem to have touched a raw nerve somewhere ...JR8 wrote: I think the thing here is that the rules and forms are pretty clear. The state's intention is you DIY it, and there's pretty good anecdotal evidence that using an agent is positively held against you. An agent has no 'special knowledge'. In fact I'd vouch no agent understands the rules better, or provides 'advantage' vs the collective knowledge on this forum and using a DIY approach. If I were ICA and I received a visa application from a long-time PR, that came via an agent, I'd be asking what's so complicated, why the agent, what in the application might be being 'burnished' (aka 'polished up')?
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