Australian business office?

hi all,

I’ve had the need to go to the visa section of the Australian business office a few times this week and i’ve got one major observation, or question? Do any “white” australians actually work there?

I don’t make this observation as a rascist remark but more of a question, as each time i’ve been there and made enquiries there, (and also in the Consular section), i got help from an Asian person - and some with American accents at that! Plus the help they gave me was basically saying that i need to check the website for the appropriate government agency.

I needed to ask them about registering our new baby and they told me that i can access the forms from the website and print them out (but i don’t have access to a printer). Plus the American accented asian person behind the counter did not undertand, or could not comprehend my Australian sarcasm.

Is this a normal experience?

g

unfortunately yes, mate.

there are some white folks there, they keep them in a box behind the counter and throw some vegemite-smeared vitaweets at them from time to time.

if there is a major problem, you can ‘ask to see the shift manager’. they have a direct line to the local (that’d be the tavern across the road). they’ll be out to see you shortly, love. would you like to grab a a seat in the waiting room for a month or so? its all designed to make you feel like you are actually in australia, applying for the dole down at the CES. oh, that’s right, that’s gone now, hasn’t it? thanks little johnnie.

sorry, this needed some sarcasm back at ya. sarcasm does not work here, it seems, so i thought you may have missed it.

i believe that they do not wish to register births deaths and marriages that take place out side of oz. now, if you want to get in to the country based on that, (except being dead, of course) you then need to supply lots of new evidence that this person is your child, like Birth certificate, etc., at the time of application for an entry visa. and yes, your new child is an alien. four year on a temporary resident visa then apply for a permanent one, i think the new regs are. having registered your baby (is that like a car?) does not matter or help one bit. bloody hell.

you might need to check exactly how the forms need to be filled out. When I renewed my Oz passport a couple of years ago, my friend who acted as the witness (or whatever it’s called - the person who signs it saying I am who i say) filled out his part of the form in the wrong colour (black instead of blue or something like that) and they wouldn’t accept it. So I had to take a taxi ride back to my friends place in Jingmei with a new form, rushing so i could get there before he left for work, and then return to the office to go through the whole process again. Including answering the same questions from the woman who served me, even though she’d just asked me them 2 hours earlier.

White or not I do not care… But when they still had a visa office in KaoHsiung/GaoXiong some years ago, I think about 6 years and at that time I went there to drop off a visa application for my Taiwanese friend to go to Oz with me (my friend had to work in the mronings when they were open and I didn’t). I said the the stupid presumably local hired, educated in USA biatch behind the counter that my friend and I want to go to Oz so she needs a visa. I was speaking in English coz I had been addressed in English and she seemed to speak it well enough. But the answer I got @#%^&*()_ I would have expected in 7-11 but not in the AUSTRALIAN trade office. “You have to pay this money, but you Americans would not understand” (I knew from reasing the Chinese sign what she wanted to say was HuaBo, the post office remitance, but she could not express it in English). At that time the only nationalities that did not need a visa in advance to enter Oz were Kiwis and of course Australians. Now I would assume even a dumb person working in the Australian visa office might be expected to know that and deduce that I must be from Oz or NZ given what I had just said. I really wanted to tell her “you Japanese and DaLuRen would not understand…” but I somehow held my temper so that my friend could get the visa without problems via me.
A few years ago I met the woman who was or maybe still is the Australian pseudo ambasador and told her sorry for the whinge but I just MUST tell u this story. She seemed much to my suprise to show genuine anger/disbelief that her staff would have said that but anyway they no longer issue visas down here and Taiwanese get them more easily than before now anyway.
Enough of my rant for today… just thought some fellow Anzac end of the world person/people might appreciate knowing they are not alone with experiences along these lines…

Rage against the machine you blokes.

The rep offices are here to make money attracting students and business etc. There’s no money to be made helping ex-pats get passports.