well, i don’t think you could stuff more good news into a single email.
today i got an email from miss pascale battrick introducing herself as my case officer (milestone #1) and indicating that “Following an initial assessment it appears that the only matter outstanding is completing the settlement interview… Having assessed your qualifications and work experience I expect it to be fairly straight forward.” (big milestone #2). this means that there wasn’t a single question or issue with our application and we are able to go straight to the interview. nzis indicates that the expected time to approve an application is 2 to 3 months. good job to whoever put our application together. but wait, there’s more. pascale continues “This phone interview will take between 15-30 minutes Please telephone me between 09:00hrs-15:30hrs Monday-Friday, or email me to arrange a suitable time” (milestone #3). The expectation was that we would need to wait for their rare trip to the states and then travel down to washington d.c. for an interview or i would need to fly to london at my own expense for a face to face interview. this just saved another 2 months, quite a bit of money and a small mountain of hassles.
this one email moves us up over 5 months. we were targeting an interview on the 10th of october. i should now be able to do that before the end of april and we’re on track for a decision by may 7th.
i’m still not packing my bags yet, but it is starting to feel very real today.