Mild Rover wrote:Yeah, I'd assumed (wrongly) that being an ACP country allowed free movement of labour as well preventing discriminatory rules once a worker is here. When people call for a more aggressive approach to the quota from the RFL, I don't think they realise just how close the rules sail to the wind as it is.
Perhaps then the two-step process of passport and visa from Tonga was considered a more appealing option for some reason (more likely to succeed? It doesn't seem to be quicker).
Other possibilities are that he simply wanted to spend the holiday period on holiday - which'd worry me slightly. Or Rovers and he maybe disagreed on whether a signing-on fee or wages should be paid before or after he got clearance, causing a delay. A simple delay on an Oz visa or the investigation into the alleged incompetent betting sting seem less likely, based on the little information available.
It's all quite mysterious. As Lauaki found out, applying for a visa on a Tongan passport can in fact work out slower as it involves a test to ensure that you can speak English to a decent standard. I suppose that if there were some problem getting a visa from the Oz office it might be worth a shot at the Tongan route as a work-around.
I'm beginning to think that the whole 'Tongan passport' thing might be a misunderstanding based on a TIC comment from Mason and some sloppy journalism.
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