# How much evidence to include to prove how we kept in contact while apart? 820 visa



## shell_32000 (Jul 23, 2013)

Hey everyone,

My partner and I are currently getting everything together and finalising our forms and evidence for our 820 visa onshore (our appointment with Immigration is December 30th this year so coming up very fast now!). We just had a couple of questions (sorry if they have already been asked recently on here, it must get annoying at times!)..and sorry for the long post, I like to be detailed 

The booklet says to include "correspondence and itemised phone accounts to show that contact was maintained during any
period of separation", I was in the UK for several months before I came to visit Michael, and then another 5 months after as I was saving up to come out here on my WHV but we talked on yahoo messenger at least 4-5 times a week (often more) as well as constant communication via email, but how much of this should we include in our application? We went through all of our chat log history from October 2011 up to the day before I came out here in December 2012 and we got screenshots of every month (a few more on some months) and when we went to print it out it came to 30 pages! We weren't sure as to how much they require. 

The application checklist says "do not send long transcripts of Skype of phone conversations as this will not be considered as evidence of your genuine and ongoing relationship", it's confusing because they want you to prove that you kept in contact but don't want too much because it isn't "evidence". They really like to keep people guessing!

We thought it might be a good idea to take screenshots of our inbox to show how much we kept in contact, but again it came to almost 30 pages! What would you guys suggest we do? What have other people done in their application? 

Also, is it relevant to highlight things in our evidence or will Immigration find it patronising? I wanted to highlight parts but my partner said they might take offence that a lot of things are highlighted, annotated and simplified. Has anyone else highlighted parts in their evidence or annotated?

Any advice would be much appreciated


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## shell_32000 (Jul 23, 2013)

Can anyone help me with this?


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## Amandy (Sep 16, 2009)

Even though I've sponsored twice, I never had time apart so I wouldn't know. But, better safe than sorry. I would add everything. 
Some here are being rejected for not providing enough and then immi says the relationship is not genuine. Then it goes to MRT and to support yourself supply 1000 pages of evidence. 
I'd submit the 30 pages and explain that they want to know how you kept in contact, this is how. I think also phone bills help. Immi want to know that you kept in touch, not necessarily what you were talking about when you kept in touch. Make sense?


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## Inkhearted (Dec 4, 2011)

We were apart more than we were together, so we felt like we had to make an especially strong case that we were in constant contact. We have every e-mail we ever sent to each other from 2005-2012 when we were finally actually living together in separate folders in our e-mail accounts. We took those and printed them off (the list, not the actual e-mails; it showed date, from/to, and subject line). Plus we included a few excerpts, such as e-mails where we were planning to come see each other.

In addition, we did print off our Skype history and sent it in. Another tip I learned from this forum was our "Facebook Friendship" page, which shows a few excerpts of our public conversations on Facebook, plus how long we've been friends, a few pictures, how many friends we have in common... that one sort of covers a lot of different bases.

We only used Skype, e-mail, and FB to keep in contact. Well, at the beginning we used phones, but landlines with callcards so there's no record of that left over. No letters sent to each other or anything (postage can add up!) Honestly, I don't see how else WE could have presented our case without the above mentioned items. So, that's what we did. No visa decision yet so I can't tell you if it worked or if it's "not considered evidence", but I say send along what you can as long as you don't think it's going to completely bog them down, and organize it well so they can go through it without too much trouble.

Edit: Also, we didn't highlight anything, but I did include a short synopsis of what each item was-- for instance, I typed up a little paragraph before the e-mail list that said, "We have been in constant contact since 2005, as shown by the following list of e-mails in our inboxes. As you can see, we have been e-mailing each other at least every week since we met in order to remain in contact. In addition, we Skype almost daily." That sort of thing.


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## shell_32000 (Jul 23, 2013)

Amandy said:


> Even though I've sponsored twice, I never had time apart so I wouldn't know. But, better safe than sorry. I would add everything.
> Some here are being rejected for not providing enough and then immi says the relationship is not genuine. Then it goes to MRT and to support yourself supply 1000 pages of evidence.
> I'd submit the 30 pages and explain that they want to know how you kept in contact, this is how. I think also phone bills help. Immi want to know that you kept in touch, not necessarily what you were talking about when you kept in touch. Make sense?


Hi Amandy,

Thanks for the reply. I understand what you meant and thanks for that, it makes sense  I think I'm now going to provide a statement along with all our messenger and email history explaining that this is HOW we kept in contact. It's hard because Immi don't state how much they expect for evidence but say if there's too much then it won't prove that the relationship is genuine...it doesn't seem to make sense. They should be a bit clearer as to how much they find acceptable as enough evidence and what they find too much. It's a bit of a guessing game at times.


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## shell_32000 (Jul 23, 2013)

Inkhearted said:


> We were apart more than we were together, so we felt like we had to make an especially strong case that we were in constant contact. We have every e-mail we ever sent to each other from 2005-2012 when we were finally actually living together in separate folders in our e-mail accounts. We took those and printed them off (the list, not the actual e-mails; it showed date, from/to, and subject line). Plus we included a few excerpts, such as e-mails where we were planning to come see each other.
> 
> In addition, we did print off our Skype history and sent it in. Another tip I learned from this forum was our "Facebook Friendship" page, which shows a few excerpts of our public conversations on Facebook, plus how long we've been friends, a few pictures, how many friends we have in common... that one sort of covers a lot of different bases.
> 
> ...


Thanks Inkhearted for replying, I found it very useful 

Wow you were apart for a long time! How did you manage all those years?! We found it hard just being apart for 9 months and then another 6 months  You did well and your relationship is a very strong one  We only sent each other a couple of Birthday and Christmas cards during the time that we were apart. You're right though, postage does add up! It's very expensive to send things.

That's a good tip about the "Facebook friendship" page, I didn't think of doing that. I've included facebook "statuses and check ins" since we've been living together (e.g- checking in at a hotel with my partner, restaurant, tagging my partner's family and friends in events, etc). I will definitely include the friendship page too.

From reading your reply, I'm going to include our messenger and email history. What I have thought about doing is to put a separate clip on it and write on it saying that this is ALL of our communication history with each other during the times that we were apart, then it's the assessor 's choice if they want to look through it all. At least it's there for them just in case, and easy for them to either read through or skip to the next section.

Cool ok, i'll include short statements explaining the evidence that we're showing. Thanks for your advice


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## Inkhearted (Dec 4, 2011)

shell_32000 said:


> Thanks Inkhearted for replying, I found it very useful
> 
> Wow you were apart for a long time! How did you manage all those years?! We found it hard just being apart for 9 months and then another 6 months  You did well and your relationship is a very strong one  We only sent each other a couple of Birthday and Christmas cards during the time that we were apart. You're right though, postage does add up! It's very expensive to send things.


Haha, well, we weren't apart that entire time and we didn't have too much of a choice at the beginning--we were only 15 when we met, so not much room to jump on a plane and jet across the world there. From 2008 when we were both 18 we saw each other at least once a year for a few months at a time, sometimes twice, but with at least 6 months-1 year in between each visit, so it wasn't too bad (okay, it was pretty awful, but we're through it now!). I think that any amount of separation, whether it be one month or twelve, makes any couple stronger, and I'm glad to be on a forum with so many people who went through the same sort of thing that we did. 

I'm glad you found some of that helpful! I really don't think we had much of a choice but to include a lot of that, so hopefully it works out. I'd love to hear if you get any feedback from Immigration about what you include!


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## shell_32000 (Jul 23, 2013)

Inkhearted said:


> Haha, well, we weren't apart that entire time and we didn't have too much of a choice at the beginning--we were only 15 when we met, so not much room to jump on a plane and jet across the world there. From 2008 when we were both 18 we saw each other at least once a year for a few months at a time, sometimes twice, but with at least 6 months-1 year in between each visit, so it wasn't too bad (okay, it was pretty awful, but we're through it now!). I think that any amount of separation, whether it be one month or twelve, makes any couple stronger, and I'm glad to be on a forum with so many people who went through the same sort of thing that we did.
> 
> I'm glad you found some of that helpful! I really don't think we had much of a choice but to include a lot of that, so hopefully it works out. I'd love to hear if you get any feedback from Immigration about what you include!


That's really young when you met, and a big commitment to undertake, but when you find someone special you do whatever it takes to be with that person it's good that you managed to see each other once a year, it's not a lot but something that you could look forward to. Although having to say goodbye each time would have been heartbreaking. The great thing is that you're both finally together and I really hope you get your visa granted. fingers crossed for you.

Thanks, I will definitely let you know how I got on with Immigration, they gave us a confirmation email and in that it gave us a checklist for the documents that they'll check when we arrive at our appointment, so it will be interesting to see what they say and how it goes, I'm very nervous!


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## Mish (Jan 13, 2013)

30 pages is not much when it comes to chat history you should be right with that amount of pages.

If you have 100+ pages then that would be a problem!

What they mean when they say that they don't want your entire transcript is that they want you take to an extract of your conversations like when you are talking about important things like planning for the future etc.


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## Emeraldrain (Jul 30, 2013)

Hi Shell,
A lovely relationship. I wish you well.


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## shell_32000 (Jul 23, 2013)

Mish said:


> 30 pages is not much when it comes to chat history you should be right with that amount of pages.
> 
> If you have 100+ pages then that would be a problem!
> 
> What they mean when they say that they don't want your entire transcript is that they want you take to an extract of your conversations like when you are talking about important things like planning for the future etc.


The 30 pages is what we have narrowed it down to after looking through all our history (the times we were apart were October 2011-June 2012, and then the end of July-December 2012), if we showed every single part of it then there would be hundreds and hundreds of pages! When we were apart, we would talk on yahoo messenger at least 4-5 times a week and sometimes twice in one day, so there was a lot to go through, it took hours looking through our conversation history. We chose certain extracts which showed that we were talking about our future and how we felt about each other, and other extracts which showed us talking about how long it was before we got to see each other. We also did the same thing for our emails because we would email whenever we couldn't chat on messenger because of being busy, and we have hundreds and hundreds of emails we sent to each other. We tried to narrow it down the best that we could.


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## shell_32000 (Jul 23, 2013)

Emeraldrain said:


> Hi Shell,
> A lovely relationship. I wish you well.


Aww thanks Emeraldrain  that's nice of you to say.

My partner and I are so lucky to have found each other because we get on so well and make each other so happy, we're soul mates and I now believe they exist, before I met Mick I never thought they existed but he's amazing and we love each other so much. It's funny how you meet someone when you least expect it. We met on the same Oktoberfest tour in September 2011, and what started as a holiday romance, it turned into something so special, I visited Mick for a month in July 2012 and the day after I got back home, I already booked my flight and visa for December 28th 2012! And we've been living together since then  and while it was hard for me to leave my family, pets, friends, job and everything else behind in the UK to move out here to be with Mick, it was well worth it  he was worth the wait.


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## rhirhi (Apr 14, 2013)

Hi guys, 
We asked the embassy in Berlin about this...we were apart for 6 weeks. They said they just want a screen shot of your inbox with the emails NOT the actual conversation. Just evidence it took place....Skype call screen shots too (time and how long) and phone bills with txt and call evidence are also acceptable  

Hope that helps!!


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