Partner Visa Processing Times

Australian Partner Visa Processing Times.

Australian visa processing times are produced monthly by the Immigration Department, to give an idea of how long a visa application might take, assuming things do not change.

They are NOT guarantees of how long Current or Future applications will take.

Immigration have changed the way that the show Visa Processing times, showing just two times, the 50% and the 90%.

An example of this could be this image for the Onshore Partner visa. Subclass 820.

Subclass 820 visa processing time.

This shows that

50% were processed in UNDER 14 months.

40% were processed BETWEEN 14 and 26 months.

10% were processed in OVER 26 months.

Immigration also state:

The information provided in this guide is based on our current published visa processing times, and is a tool to help you understand how long a visa typically takes to process.

The previous processing times were shown something like this example: 15 months – 19 months.

Some people logically thought it meant that the visa will take between 15 and 19 months. However only a few (about 15%) were processed between those times, and the average processing time was often a lot less than the first figure quoted, with that particular example being:

  • 75% were processed in under 15 months.
  • 15% were processed between 15 and 19 months.
  • 10% were processed in over 19 months.

I have used 15-19 as an example, as that was the actual figure for the 11,702 subclass 309 visas that were granted in 2019-20, according to: Department of Home Affairs FOI request FA 20/08/00333

75% took under 15 months, and 90% took under 19 months, BUT… half, 50%, actually took under 11 months.

The actual times, broken down further were:

  • 25% took under 9 months.
  • 25% took between 9 and 11 months.
  • 25% took between 11 and 15 months.
  • 15% took between 15 and 19 months.
  • 10% took over 19 months.

These times will vary month to month based on many factors, and may be very different to the actual times that an applicant experiences, especially those applications that take many months or years.

Individual processing times can be affected by the numbers of complex cases and incomplete applications, locations of processing offices for offshore applications, together with changes in application volumes, seasonal peaks, etc.