On 30 June each year, Immigration closes its computer system to update the regulations. It seems Immigration has not worked out that the business world has worked out that one needs to do all of one’s upgrading off line and then use the early hours of the morning to load the updated parts on the computer system. The day of 30 June therefore is almost a write off for doing business with Immigration (including lodging visa applications) and even team leaders leave early to go home.
It is worse when 30 June falls around a weekend because then Immigration closes its computer systems for the whole weekend.
This is classic case of the public service just not knowing what real work is like where people keep working while they are updating their systems.
There may therefore be some occasions when the inability to complete a transaction will be recognised by Immigration and on such rare occasions, if Immigration has proof that attempt to do something was stymied by the closure of Immigration’s computer system then Immigration will back date the application to the day the application was started rather than the day the application was completed.