i am a true blue aussie girl, born and raised. i was lucky enough to meet the most amazing, caring, handsome, funny (at times childish, lol) smartest, bravest man. never in my wildest dreams did i think that i would be lucky enough to be able to call him my boyfriend let alone husband, and yet this incredible man is just that. my husband. the catch is, he is from northern india.

we were married in august 2009 and applied for a spousal visa roughly 6 mnths later. to make it easier for us, we decided to use an immigration agent. this is a decision i truly regret. we decided to use the agent by the name of melissa omalley, and before u ask, she is a registered agent through MARA. we thought we had done our homework by looking her up. my husband and i filled out the numerous forms that come with trying to lodge a visa. he took his medicals, we surrendered photos from our wedding album, a dvd my aunty had made of the day and photos of us when we first met. all of which are very important to me for obvious reasons. she took copies oy our payslips, bank accounts, joint bills, birth certificates, statements from family memebers on both sides, our licenses, his passport, his indian police clearance and his australian police clearence. what ever we had we gave to her. we did not want there to be a single doubt from the immigration deparment about our marriage.

i started to question the way she worked when she asked me for the paper of my name change when i was younger as my mother had been single and re married and i took my step fathers last name. i pointed to my birth certificate and told her to look at the bottom of it and she would find, the time, date, place and who authorised my name to be changed. i wasnt impressed she read that simple piece of paper work, but we stuck with her.

in june 2010 we handed in the last document she needed. she told us that my husband would no longer need to attend his uni and he would be able to work more than 20 hours a week which on his current student visa he was unable to do. we listened to her. he started working full time and didnt re enrol for uni. we recieved an email from her a wekk later saying that the file had been lodged june 23 2010. now we had to wait. at that time we were advised that the waiting list was 6 to 9 months and then we should have some form of response.

we waited, and waited, and waited some more. we would try to contact her and she wouldnt answer, if she did, she told us to be paitent. july 2011 came around and we still hadnt heard a single thing. we decided to ring the immigration department ourselves and see how the application was tracking. they told us that file hadnt acutally been lodged till the 23rd dec 2010 ( 6 mnths later thn she had told us) and that there were documents pending. we asked which document as we had filled everything out and had even already updated our details. they needed a form to update our details (which we had already given to melissa) and a form stating where my husband was working and for how long etc ( a form we had given melissa twice).

my husband ended up having to go to the immigration office himself to pick up the forms again, fill them out again and hand them in himself just so that we knew they were there. in this time he was also informed that he had been violating the conditions of his student visa which would normally result in him being deported. we explained to them wat had happened and we now have an interview with student compliance which i can only hope is a good thing.

once we had found out that melissa hadnt handed in the forms we asked her why and she blamed he co workers stating that she had asked them to do it for her but that didnt. i told her that wasnt good enough, we didnt pay them, we paid her and trusted her. her story changed and the excuse now was she was too busy. she offered to refund 50% of her professional fees to which we v quickly said no and demanded a full refund. she agreed but somehow we are still waiting. we requested that she sign the papers needed so that she was no longer in control of our file and asked for our file to be given to us. she reluctently agreed ( evn though when she gave it to us the reports from his medicals were missing).

we are now in control of our visa application. as we were checking through the file and looking at all of the documents, we noticed that melissa had stamped, signed and dated all papers for the 20th of dec 2010. she had our file sitting on her desk the whole time and still blamed her co workers! it gives us evidence to lodge a more serious complaint but i want everyone to know what a fraud she is. i dont want another couple to have to go through what we have. nobody should have to go through that especially when you do the right thing and pay your way. its just not right.