Hi everyone, sorry to have everyone freaked out not writing all day - yesterday was a very long and exhausting day but... good turn out. Or as good as can be expected anyhow so all your good thoughts and prayers must have been busy at work!

Bridging visa was granted in compliance office after a bajillion calls between departments, so at least I'm not an illegal alien on the run now. What happens after that is a bit more up in the air - I may need to go onto a different type of bridging visa or if things don't go in our favor then no visa would be necessary - just the plane ticket... but hopefully doesn't come to that.

Down to see case officer, though it's out of her hands officially now apparently, because it was officially rejected, she is the representative for us 'in' the department and recognized us from previous visa (prospective fiancee and the provisional-perm) application photos. From the mig. legal aid dude I talked to about 30 mins after getting the letter, she is a good one to have as she's willing to work with people as much as she can. She is supposed to be calling us back later today to let me know more preliminary information on what happens now from their end. She was also pretty shocked at the stuff we'd been told and luckily since we'd noted down who'd told us each and at what times, was able to tell her who and her supervisor wanted to know who also.

As a slight positive, she said that when she inherited the case file and had gone over it initially she'd assumed it would be granted because we met all the requirements and the only reason it was rejected was because of them not being able to locate us (because of the previous agents snafus)... Hopefully the good previous case history and our meeting all the other requirements as well as our cooperating with the complicance office and contacting them as soon as we knew there was a problem (literally 30 mins later, after contacting mig. agent) all work in our favor.

Meanwhile we will be following up with our migration agent/lawyer from the previous 2 visas. She's in the US but she has all our case-files and history from the previous ones. Also US consulate etc so at least they're alerted. Plus getting La his passport, just in case etc etc etc etc etc etc etc

I'm just buggered. Still trying to absorb everything. We got home yesterday evening and it hit me like bricks, major migrane and just collpased for awhile going from, "everything humming merrily along" to the rollercoaster of 'your application has been rejected', 'it's lost and we can't tell you who your case agent is', 'we thought you'd left the country', 'we cant guarantee you won't be deported immediately' Good heavens!

Well, I suppose the bright side is we'll have colourful stories for the grandkids eventually.......