Onshore/Offshore Partner Visa?

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9 March 2020
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Hi there. Hope someone can help.

Currently we're looking to apply for a partner visa for my wife but we're a little unsure of a point in the application.

My wife is currently on a student visa which has no restrictions regarding applying for other visas.

We had a long distance relationship between Australia and Japan prior to her coming to study.

Developing skills through study was something she had been looking to do and Australia offered better opportunities for study as opposed to Japan

Our intentions were to go back to Japan together once her studies were over (we discussed this at the time she was applying for her student visa and she wrote her intention to return in her student application).

Since then, my wife changed courses due to her original occupation choice being a bad fit for her personality. She has had to reconsider her plans for home. Despite really enjoying her new field of study, the skills aren't instantly transferable as her old course was.

Since she started school in Jan 2019, we have lived together and our relationship grew to the point where we are now married (since November)

We married in her home town, and on our visit our eagerness to move to Japan has dampened some what. I lived in Japan before, but I was perhaps looking at that time through rose tinted glasses.

We have really settled into life here in Australia and our perspectives of leaving Australia have changed. I used to have a strong desire to be anywhere but here, but my wife completes me in so many ways and we are content in what we have here (it's hard to better content which worries me lol). To top off the contenment factor, I've recently been offered a good and well paying job.

My query is regarding when we apply for a partner visa. Should we do it offshore when her student visa expires in September (show her intention to return home was genuine), or would a change of circumstance be considered by the presiding case officer when looking at an onshore application?

Hope this makes sense,

Thanks to anyone out there who may have some thoughts on the matter.
 

Tim W

Lawyer
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Since she started school in Jan 2019....
Just so I'm clear.
Are you an American? You write as though you are?

You are not the first people to be in this scenario.
But you will need case specific advice from a lawyer who is also a Registerd Migration Agent.