FBR Witness Signature

[billabong1]

Hello - our intended witness to sign the application doesn't live near us, does anyone think it will be noticed that the addresses of the applicant and the witness are across the US from each other?
Also, how has anyone dealt with a minor name change to the surname of the grandfather on whom the FBR application is based? Just a small change that probably happened on arrival in the US.
Thanks

[PasadenaTom]

Maybe they will notice. But if you met the criteria of a witness who personally knows you and is a member of certain professions, the only question they might have is whether you actually signed the application in that person's presence. If so, they might contact your witness to confirm. Someone else on this forum mentioned that their witness had been contacted. But I don't know if they do that regularly.

From what others have posted here, I get the impression that they do accept that there may be minor inconsistencies in names and dates. Record keeping wasn't as precise in the past. In various official Irish records (birth, marriage, census), the first name of one of my great grandmothers appears as Lizzie, Eliza, and Bessie. I didn't use that ancestral line in my application for other reasons. But it shows that official records have a lot of varations, and DFAT would be aware of that.

I am sure we'd all love to be able to know the status of our applications as it moves through the approval process. Do they sit in a queue for a while, waiting for initial review, then wait in one or more additional queues where they will wait for final approval, document preparation, and mailing? I don't think anyone outside of DFAT knows what is involved in the process. Hopefully, if additional information is needed, that is identified early.

[billabong1]

Thanks so much PasedenaTom- this was helpful. Have you successfully done a RFB?

[PasadenaTom]

Have you successfully done a RFB?

Not yet. I am about two months past the time when receipt of my documents was acknowledged. If (as the acknowledgement said) it does take up to six months, I still have 3-4 months to wait. So I wait and watch this forum to see what others have experienced, hoping to see some sign that the wait times are getting shorter, and for confirmation that nothing about my documentation will be an issue (my grandparent's ages on their marriage certificates were off by 2-4 years, and my grandfather's death certificate contained a middle initial that doesn't appear in any other documents).