The Week From Hell - What a mistake to make!

As weeks go, this one has been pretty rubbish if I am honest. Darrell and I often have periods like this; one minute things are going great and the next everything goes 'tits up.' As it happens, things started well on Monday; we went out looking for furniture for the house and just spent time shopping. I went for my usual mooch around the local charity shops and the day passed by relatively quickly. That was until I received an email from my solicitor, John, who had heard from the Department of Home Affairs, asking me to grant my caseworker permission to contact ACRO about my UK police record.

Way back in the dim and distant past, I made some stupid choices, nothing bad, just drunken shenanigans and high jinx, that ended with me getting a slap on the wrist. These weren't even classed as criminal convictions; I was told off by the police and that was the end of the matter. However, Australia's strict immigration policy says I have to declare any and all history, spent or unspent, however minor. To be honest, if I asked any of you, if you ever got in trouble with the police in the past, for something foolish, I'm sure most of you would say yes. Despite this, I confirmed all of my details when applying for the partner visa, and believed the matter was now closed.

In 2009, I trained to be an Advocate and Mentor with Action for Children. I went through a particularly harrowing enrolment programme and had to supply an 'Enhanced Disclosure,' just to show I was suitable to work in the position I had applied for. At the time I had just started a new job at Oxfam and sadly couldn't take up the appointment, but I received the certificate, saying I was approved to work, and put it in the back of a draw, forgetting about it until I arrived in Perth.

The truth is I never looked at it, because I didn't need to, I knew what the entries would include, so just left it to one side. This was never really a piece of paper I needed to use, until today, when applying for visas here in Australia. I referred briefly to the certificate, including the information in my application form as requested. When I arrived at Perth Airport in September 2022, I even showed Boarder Force the document, who duly took a photocopy for their records and let me go through unhindered.

The day after I received the letter from my solicitor, I phoned ACRO, interestingly located in my home town of Fareham, and spoke to a representative on the phone, who relayed the details on my police certificate verbally. This is apparently standard practice, and a written copy is only available under an 'Access of Information Order.' Everything she disclosed I knew about, except the final submission. My heart sank. Although this was no more serious than any of the other narratives I knew about, I had failed to disclose it to the authorities in Australia, and that could be a real problem going forward.

How the hell didn't I know about this entry? I immediately contacted my solicitor who told me to write a Statutory Declaration, informing immigration of my mistake and to declare the relevant information on my application for permanent residency. He also suggested reading the 'Enhanced Disclosure,' just to make sure there was nothing else on there; something I may have missed.

Now this is going to sound like I'm stupid, but one has to remember I have never looked at the disclosure properly, because I thought I knew what it contained. However, I found the document and started to examine it. For the first time, I turned the document over, and there at the top of the second page was the offending paragraph. I had literally never read any further than page one, and that was the problem. I have never felt such an idiot in all my life.

The records on my Police Clearance Certificate are not a reason to deny me settlement in Australia, by any means. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn't even be considered. What is more serious is the fact I didn't declare one of them in the first place. This was a genuine oversight that should never have happened, but it has, and I have held my hands up to it, hoping that The Department For Home Affairs sees the genuine nature of my error. I am so upset with myself, as everything was going so well, but this is one big spanner in the works and there isn't anything I can do to put it right.

For now, I am putting all of this to the back of my mind and, as my solicitor encouraged, getting on with the rest of my life. This may or may not be a problem going forward, but after the trauma and stress this has caused, I have to just park this for a while, until I am contacted about it officially. My fingers are crossed this will not hinder our future down under, but I'm not taking anything for granted and hope the powers that be, see through what was an essentially ridiculous oversight, as I rushed to complete my application.

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