The whole process of emigrating turned out to be less stressful than we had anticipated. Don’t get me wrong, there were still times when we thought: ‘Oh, no, what will they ask for next? How many more pieces of paper can the authorities want from us? Are we ever going to get there?’ And, of course, we had our moments of uncertainty. Once we found out from our initial interview with OE that we would be eligible to emigrate, and started the ball rolling, I was much more excited than Lesley. She felt that giving up everything and moving so far from our families was going to be a huge  wrench. Suddenly, we were doing something about emigrating rather than just talking about it, and for a while she found the idea overwhelming.

The whole process took 19 months, from initial interview to the visas landing on the doormat. Looking back on it, it all seemed to go remarkably smoothly, each stage following automatically from the last. The worst of it was the endless waiting; every week we seemed to be on tenterhooks as we waited for some document or other to come in the mail. As we were both working full-time we would have struggled to complete the process on our own, so the help and support of OE Visas in Edinburgh was essential. It gave us great peace of mind to know we could pick up the telephone and speak to friendly staff who would be able to answer our questions. And having a personal agent who was dealing with our case meant we didn’t have to repeat ourselves to everyone we talked to.