Our journey towards achieving a life long dream, started more than two years ago. In the beginning of 2016 Chris and I appointed Thames Migration via there UK, London office to prepare and manage a 457 visa application for us. The process was long and complicated and unfortunately my employer in Australia decided to pull out of the agreement last minute and we were refused.

With this disappointment, we decided to move on and prepare for a visa 489. This meant achieving superior English, having a skills assessment done and translating various documents, before finally submitting our application in September 2017. We received state sponsorship through South Australia, which came through rather quick and this was a nice change for us and possibly our first real positive experience since we started out our journey almost a year and a half earlier. Although we had this nice experience, we were at this point tired and exhausted from the process and decided to make arrangements for our medical examinations, so that we could sit back and relax after a year and a half of non-stop hard work, whilst waiting for the final outcome. We went in October 2017 and to our surprise, Chris' examination was not approved. We declared everything in our past and did not expect that Chris' medical history (which occurred in his youth) would become a problem, as he has managed to turn that part of his life around, but we got wiser, as we were now facing a request from Medical Officer of the Commonwealth (MOC), having to present a recent psychiatrist report on Chris. Hannibal was great, he guided us through this very emotional and testing time, he understood and showed understanding for our situation, which was long stretched, we were tired and ready to give up.

We would like to thank Hannibal Khoury for coming through for us at the end of this very long and hard road, where trust and faith and belief had all gone haywire a long time ago. If it had not been for Hannibal, Chris and I would have given up just before the finishing line, because we no longer believed in the process. Hannibal though, told us that it would be a big mistake to give up at this point and he managed to ‘hold our hands’ through this process and the outcome was everything we had hoped for. We finally received our Subclass 489, Skilled Nominated (provisional) visa in March 2018.

Choosing Thames Migration and in particular Hannibal to begin with, turned out to be a wise move for us He prepared and presented our case to MOC and he got us through the eye of the needle. The minute we got our visa, all our hardships and difficulties was forgotten and our focus immediately changed to our new life in South Australia, a new adventure, a life that we have been dreaming about for the past two years and more, but really decades. We could not have done this on our own and believe that this achievement comes down to a mix of perseverance, patience and professional guidance. We would very much like if Hannibal could personally look after our PR application in the future and repeat the success.