Anything from 9 months to 24 months is normal nowadays. And you can "take Home Affairs to court" with a court order, to put it in layman's , which speeds things up to 3 months.

 

My British partner applied for a Permanent Residence Visa in London in March 2013 and we got the shock of our lives to get an email from SA High Commission day before yesterday saying it had come through. We were told by the SAHC themselves to expect the minimum of a 2 year wait and therefore factored in another year to save money to take with us. I heard from my immigration company that they have employed a lot more people to deal with the backlog. We are waiting for the certificate to arrive in the post now.

 

Hi
Is it possible to get our residence certificate by post. We live in another country now. We got e-mail that outcomes are ready to collect. Please help me if you know anything about this. Thank you.

 

thanks for the responses everyone. Fingers crossed it wont take too long.

 

Here is what have seen and been told by my sources. Use this information with care and as usual any risk associated or damage thereof result after use of this information will be purely of your own.

100 - Received at the office of application
101 - Dispatched to head office
102 - Received at Head Office and processing has begun. Mostly likely that its now assigned to a Case officer and normally takes upt to 3 months in here and moves to stage 103
103 - Your application has been processed and now depending with the outcome the printing and g of stickers starts.normally 1 to 2 months here. DG has to sign your sticker or certificate.
104 - Your application has been dispatched to the office of application. They capture this info and wait for the shipping so you may wait a lot here. Depending with which office you applied you may wait here as well. I know someone who waited for 3 months
105 - Received at office of application and ready for collection
106 - collected by the applicant

 

@Skilled,

I've been waiting for my PR about 8 month already. I called HA on Tus, they checked and confirmed that it was with Pretoria head office for processing, and i should follow up in 3 weeks time. Then on the same day in the afternoon, i received a sms from HA saying my application has been finalised and to collect in 5 working day. is this possible, or system error? And, i decided to go on their website to track my application, it showed code 104. So now im a bit confused.

please can you advise?

 

Hi Ad,

I applied for my PR in September 2012 and i finally received it yesterday!
In speaking to the immigration practitioner i used for the application he said that they are getting a lot of applications coming through quickly now, so it seems the task team they set up to clear the backlog is working. He said they even had one client that applied in November last year and received his permit last week.

Good luck, i hope yours comes through soon. Mine took about a month from being finalised to being sent from PTA to JHB wher i applied, so be prepared for a bit of a wait for that.

 

Thanks for all the advice. Skilled I appreciate the info but obviously wont take it as 100% guaranteed, just wanted some sort of idea as am considering moving back to UK for a while whilst the app goes through. So helps in making the next decision

 

Last year I wrote to an agency who said they could get my family all their visas ( including my PR) and we could be in SA in 6 weeks! Perhaps agency applications gets priority over sending applications by yourself???

 

Wow. Definitely what someone will say when they want your money. Once the money has been deposited, reality strikes! "Application has now taken over 2 years"

 

No "agency" (careful of those!) or immigration lawyer firm can ever promise you a permit or visa application response time, purely because they are not issuing them! However, yes, whatever the time it would take you on your own, immigration services companies will be faster.

 

ok so the latest for anyone interested is that I should know in the next 2-3 days!!!! Fingers crossed that I get a sucessfull outcome!

 

ok so the latest for anyone interested is that I should know in the next 2-3 days!!!! Fingers crossed that I get a successful outcome!

Hie Ad

How long did you wait from the day you received the sms of finalization to the date that you collected. I have heard that some people wait about a month but the sms they sent me says 5 working days?

Kind Regards

 

It means they have finalised your application and its on the dispatch counter at Head office or on its ways to your office of application.

To know the outcome you can call your office of application or you can walk in anyday. But for the certificate or whatever it is you need to wait from 5days to 14 days.. and sometimes a month.

But once it shows status 105.. it means that your office of application has receieved it and captured it in their system.

Good luck, I received an SMS too few days ago but still don't know the outcome.

 

After receiving the SMS...i waiting 8 working days before going to collect the outcome. The anxiety wasn't fun

 

@Skilled,
Cool, thanks.

 

I got my PR today under worker category. I applied in December. I will apply for an ID on Tuesday.

 

Congrates! good to hear that.

keep us updated on ID application

 

Hi all

Please help.
We applied for PR in February 2014 and all the time it has been sitting on code 102.Today when i checked its now on code 103.I then phoned home affairs and the consultant said the application is now with the adjudicators and this was only updated today.

Does anyone have a rough idea on how long it takes for our application to move from this stage to code 104?
What happens on code 103?

 

Under what section did you put up your application on?

 

Husband was main applicant under Special skills

 

Hi

Usually on 103 things start moving...code 103 means 'processed.Sticker or certificate g'...it should move to code 104 within the next week or 2.....code 102 is always the code where most applications get stuck.

 

Thanks!Crossing our fingers.
It took about 7 months on code 102 and today 103,so maybe the application will take 8 months as per home affairs.

 

Hummm, I'm not trying to burst your bubble but here is the situation: My husband, on a quota work permit, applied for PR in January 2014. It sat on code 102 (received at application office) for 6 months. Only in June it went onto 103 (processing at head office), to this day. So you still have a long way to go. Call centres always tell you that it's with adjudicators to appease you but in reality it's none of that... Patience is the key word with HA.

 

Hi Dallant
Thanks for the information,anything is possible with them.
What do they say when you phone them?
With me i had to open a case last week and also our company is using a lawyer to speed things up,apparently the lawyer sent letter of demand last week.
So im not sure if this is the reason for the change to the next stage or its simply home affairs work.
I will keep you updated on our application.

 

Just an update, my husband got his PR today after 9 months.

 

Hi.
Was he given a sticker in the port. I heard they dont put stickers anymore but only issue the certificates? How true is that?

 

Congrats!when did you guys apply?
When did it move from code 103 to 104?
Some lady on the home affairs website said they are busy with February applications now so we should expect an outcome soon.Crossing our fingers.

 

He applied in January. It took 6 months from 102 to 103, I never saw 104 and I've been checking at least once a week, then this morning I checked 9 after 3 months of being on 103) it was 105-go collect outcome at office of application. Good thing he was off today, i called him and he went the HA, got it, now it's at 106-already collected. Good luck!

 

Looks like the average timeline.My wife applied for PR in early Jan 2014 and got it earlier this month.

 

Does the office of application have any impact with respect to speedy processing. I applied for mine on 9-Jan-14 at Pretoria, Akasia office and it's still sitting at 102 in September 2014. Is this normal?

 

That's strange.
We applied on the 20th of February 2014 at Akasia as well and last week it moved to code 103.
Did you open a case?Im sure ull get yours soon.
Call Joyce,lady responsible for PR,her number is on the website.

 

Do you perhaps have the number for her. I couldnt get it on the website. My email is [email protected]

 

Thanx. I will do that.

 

No more stickers are issued.They will give you an A4 size permit

 

When did they stop with the stickers?

 

You are not alone, with a PR application you just need extreme patience otherwise the wait can drive you to drink! My online status for the past 7 months has been "Code 102: Processing at Head Office" I now hate the digit 2 so much. Tried emailing and phoning every other no on the DHA website to no avail. And my very worst act of desperation was following the Minister on Twitter!! My current Quota permit expires in 04/2015 so I have just resolved to invest my effort in getting a new critical skills TRV while actively searching for new destinations to ply my trade!!!

 

I wonder whats causing the delays. m very hopeful, it shall be out before then.