This is a pretty odd question but after researching it all a bit I thought boredofstudies would probably know better than anyone else how this works. I haven't posted before but I found the site pretty useful last year when doing my HSC.. so, er, thanks, collective forum! I hope this is the best forum to post this question. It's about coming to Australia to study rather than going on exchange elsewhere.. please move this topic elsewhere if I messed up! (Sorry!)
Anyway, to the point - my girlfriend lives in the US, specifically New Jersey studying at Rutgers University. Internet relationship thing. We've worked out that what we want to do is have her fly over here in January, get into UTS for a teaching degree, and she can stay with me until we both graduate.
Right now we're going the conventional way and have applied for a place in March next year and seem to be on track as far as obtaining it goes - my girlfriend's credentials after studying one year at her American university seems to have put her in a good position to get an offer. Only problem is of course the fees - we thought we could manage with the $14k (AUD) a year that it used to be for the Bachelor of Primary Education, but now it went up to $17.5k\yr and that's kind of pushing our resources, of course. So I was wondering how feasible the following crazy idea could be.
So, teaching seems to be around $3,500\yr if you're Commonwealth supported, which is a pretty big discount from $17,500. But my girlfriend is not an Australian citizen. I am. So we were looking up.. what if I was to marry her? Could it be feasible that she have a "gap year" when she arrives while the paperwork goes through, and starting 2008 begin studying as an Australian citizen?
So far the results of my search are discouraging. It seems:
- If I get her to come on a prospective marriage visa (no problem) and marry her immediately (no problem), it is unclear how long it'd take to get her permanent residency.
- You can't apply for citizenship until you're a permanent resident.
- You have to have been a permanent resident for at least 12 months and prove that you would "suffer significant hardship or disadvantage" if your application wasn't granted sooner.
- This doesn't take into account the time it'd take to process and the pretty huge fees for permanent residency stuff (It's $1,300 for the prospective marriage visa alone.)
I used immi.gov.au and citizenship.gov.au as my main sources.
As for the less bureaucratic parts of the plan - don't worry, it'd be purely a marriage for legal reasons and our relationship isn't particularly shaky (almost four years now, and we spent two months together in each other's countries around last Christmas.) So.. any ideas, or even just a simple "It's sadly not that easy, you gotta pay the insane international fees"? It doesn't look encouraging but I'd be stupid not to check if there's any possible way to get that Commonwealth supported tuition if possible. Thanks!
Anyway, to the point - my girlfriend lives in the US, specifically New Jersey studying at Rutgers University. Internet relationship thing. We've worked out that what we want to do is have her fly over here in January, get into UTS for a teaching degree, and she can stay with me until we both graduate.
Right now we're going the conventional way and have applied for a place in March next year and seem to be on track as far as obtaining it goes - my girlfriend's credentials after studying one year at her American university seems to have put her in a good position to get an offer. Only problem is of course the fees - we thought we could manage with the $14k (AUD) a year that it used to be for the Bachelor of Primary Education, but now it went up to $17.5k\yr and that's kind of pushing our resources, of course. So I was wondering how feasible the following crazy idea could be.
So, teaching seems to be around $3,500\yr if you're Commonwealth supported, which is a pretty big discount from $17,500. But my girlfriend is not an Australian citizen. I am. So we were looking up.. what if I was to marry her? Could it be feasible that she have a "gap year" when she arrives while the paperwork goes through, and starting 2008 begin studying as an Australian citizen?
So far the results of my search are discouraging. It seems:
- If I get her to come on a prospective marriage visa (no problem) and marry her immediately (no problem), it is unclear how long it'd take to get her permanent residency.
- You can't apply for citizenship until you're a permanent resident.
- You have to have been a permanent resident for at least 12 months and prove that you would "suffer significant hardship or disadvantage" if your application wasn't granted sooner.
- This doesn't take into account the time it'd take to process and the pretty huge fees for permanent residency stuff (It's $1,300 for the prospective marriage visa alone.)
I used immi.gov.au and citizenship.gov.au as my main sources.
As for the less bureaucratic parts of the plan - don't worry, it'd be purely a marriage for legal reasons and our relationship isn't particularly shaky (almost four years now, and we spent two months together in each other's countries around last Christmas.) So.. any ideas, or even just a simple "It's sadly not that easy, you gotta pay the insane international fees"? It doesn't look encouraging but I'd be stupid not to check if there's any possible way to get that Commonwealth supported tuition if possible. Thanks!