Visa renewal frustrations
Being a (non-European) immigrant, I of course need a visa to live and work in the UK. When I originally got the job here, I applied (and paid a lot of money) to get a 3-year visa, designated to begin January 2017.
One might think, based on that description, that the visa would last until January 2020. But in fact the expiration date was set September 30, 2019. I've been cogniscant of this since at least the early summer, and back in late May or so I logged in to find out what would be required to renew it (a straightforward thing for a PhD scientist still employed in the same job I was in before, one would think). Instead, I found it would require:
* A £704 visa application fee
* A £1200 "immigration health surcharge" supposedly to cover the burdensome healthcare costs that healthy, mid-30s, childless, working, and full-rate taxpaying immigrants like me apparently sag the economy with
* A £19 fee for an appointment at a processing center that I would have to attend to get my photo and fingerprints taken, again (even though I did that already 3 years ago when I applied the first time?!)
Oh yeah, and it would also take 8 weeks to process and I couldn't leave the country in the meantime.
Which pretty much blindsided me, because the summer is when I don't have classes to deal with and can therefore travel - and already had a variety of (expensive, important, and nonrefundable) trips booked, including the Denmark/France trip in June and the super-long US trip that got me back September 15, two weeks before the expiry date.
Now of "course" the visa agency also offered a "super priority service" for a mere additional £800, which magically speeds the process up from 8 weeks to 1 day after the processing-center appointment. A relief, I guess. But the most conservative reading of the rules suggested that you couldn't book an appointment until the application was submitted, and you couldn't be outside of the country after submitting the application, so I was forced to basically carry out the whole process the moment I returned from the US on Sunday - and hope for the best.
So, the moment I stepped in the door (in a jet-lagged haze after almost 24 hours of travel time) I sat down and submitted the application. And... promptly found out that of course every processing center anywhere near me is booked for the next two weeks. But I kept checking location after location and eventually found some openings - in Birmingham (about 2.5 hours away by train), and only at their "premier" processing center (which charged an extra £200). So after yet another financial shock I paid for that, booked a £23 advance train ticket, and figured I was in the clear.
Just to be on the safe side I got to my appointment an hour early and was told to wait. And wait. At around 11:15 someone came down and told me - and the 10 or so (almost entirely Chinese and Indian) other immigrants that were clearly there for the same purpose that their computer systems were down and... they didn't know when they would come back up. I waited another hour and change, and she came down again to say the systems were still down, but offered to take my contact number and claimed she would call me if things got working again. ("But if not, your appointment will be cancelled and you'll have to make a new reservation online.")
I made an angry face and sulked off for lunch and to a coffee shop to try and get some work done. One, two, three hours passed - no phone call. At this point I figured I was screwed for sure but I headed back to the office in person just to check. Ahead of me the representative was telling one immigrant that they had cancelled all appointments and he'd need to rebook. She turned the other way and told someone else the same story. Resigned I went up and asked the same question, and got the same answer. "Our system has been down all day, and we cancelled all appointments before 3 PM. We tried to call you to notify you of this but you didn't answer." [Not true, FYI, my phone hadn't missed any calls.] But then an unexpected development. "But... actually our systems went back up 10 minutes ago. When was your appointment? Possibly we could get you in..."
And then she leads me upstairs, I wait in a room for 15 minutes, get my fingerprints and photograph pointlessly taken and then miraculously (...or at least that's what it felt like after the fiasco that had come before) it was done and I could go home. (Of course I had to buy a new ticket since I'd missed my reserved train by about 5 hours, costing another £31. But it was sure better than doing that and also having to lose another day of work and pay to travel somewhere else some other day.)
And then today at 10 AM I got the e-mail notice saying that my visa application was approved and my updated residence permit would be on its way to me shortly. ("Final" cost, for those without a calculator handy: £2977, equivalent to US $3715. That's more than an entire month of my after-tax salary.)
But wait... the saga is not quite over! The reason I've been stressing out over this so massively is not simply because my current visa expires on September 30 (overstaying by a few days isn't illegal as long as it's simply because you're waiting for a new application to be approved). Instead it's because literally the very next day - October 1st - I have an interview for a 2 million research grant that I am a finalist for (and have better than a 1/3 shot at). That interview is in Brussels and so I have to leave the country to attend - or kiss that money goodbye.
So the fun part is that - according to the terms in my notice - I still can't leave the country until I have the new permit, and I have to receive it in person and it is going to be sent to my apartment, by courier, with mandatory ID check, on some unknown day "within 7 business days". Given that I work for a living (and am about to start teaching classes for the semester!) this is more than a minor inconvenience and there is a real risk that it comes in the middle of a class or something I will simply miss it and (if the delivery can't be rescheduled) also miss my interview. More stress ahead.
One might think, based on that description, that the visa would last until January 2020. But in fact the expiration date was set September 30, 2019. I've been cogniscant of this since at least the early summer, and back in late May or so I logged in to find out what would be required to renew it (a straightforward thing for a PhD scientist still employed in the same job I was in before, one would think). Instead, I found it would require:
* A £704 visa application fee
* A £1200 "immigration health surcharge" supposedly to cover the burdensome healthcare costs that healthy, mid-30s, childless, working, and full-rate taxpaying immigrants like me apparently sag the economy with
* A £19 fee for an appointment at a processing center that I would have to attend to get my photo and fingerprints taken, again (even though I did that already 3 years ago when I applied the first time?!)
Oh yeah, and it would also take 8 weeks to process and I couldn't leave the country in the meantime.
Which pretty much blindsided me, because the summer is when I don't have classes to deal with and can therefore travel - and already had a variety of (expensive, important, and nonrefundable) trips booked, including the Denmark/France trip in June and the super-long US trip that got me back September 15, two weeks before the expiry date.
Now of "course" the visa agency also offered a "super priority service" for a mere additional £800, which magically speeds the process up from 8 weeks to 1 day after the processing-center appointment. A relief, I guess. But the most conservative reading of the rules suggested that you couldn't book an appointment until the application was submitted, and you couldn't be outside of the country after submitting the application, so I was forced to basically carry out the whole process the moment I returned from the US on Sunday - and hope for the best.
So, the moment I stepped in the door (in a jet-lagged haze after almost 24 hours of travel time) I sat down and submitted the application. And... promptly found out that of course every processing center anywhere near me is booked for the next two weeks. But I kept checking location after location and eventually found some openings - in Birmingham (about 2.5 hours away by train), and only at their "premier" processing center (which charged an extra £200). So after yet another financial shock I paid for that, booked a £23 advance train ticket, and figured I was in the clear.
Just to be on the safe side I got to my appointment an hour early and was told to wait. And wait. At around 11:15 someone came down and told me - and the 10 or so (almost entirely Chinese and Indian) other immigrants that were clearly there for the same purpose that their computer systems were down and... they didn't know when they would come back up. I waited another hour and change, and she came down again to say the systems were still down, but offered to take my contact number and claimed she would call me if things got working again. ("But if not, your appointment will be cancelled and you'll have to make a new reservation online.")
I made an angry face and sulked off for lunch and to a coffee shop to try and get some work done. One, two, three hours passed - no phone call. At this point I figured I was screwed for sure but I headed back to the office in person just to check. Ahead of me the representative was telling one immigrant that they had cancelled all appointments and he'd need to rebook. She turned the other way and told someone else the same story. Resigned I went up and asked the same question, and got the same answer. "Our system has been down all day, and we cancelled all appointments before 3 PM. We tried to call you to notify you of this but you didn't answer." [Not true, FYI, my phone hadn't missed any calls.] But then an unexpected development. "But... actually our systems went back up 10 minutes ago. When was your appointment? Possibly we could get you in..."
And then she leads me upstairs, I wait in a room for 15 minutes, get my fingerprints and photograph pointlessly taken and then miraculously (...or at least that's what it felt like after the fiasco that had come before) it was done and I could go home. (Of course I had to buy a new ticket since I'd missed my reserved train by about 5 hours, costing another £31. But it was sure better than doing that and also having to lose another day of work and pay to travel somewhere else some other day.)
And then today at 10 AM I got the e-mail notice saying that my visa application was approved and my updated residence permit would be on its way to me shortly. ("Final" cost, for those without a calculator handy: £2977, equivalent to US $3715. That's more than an entire month of my after-tax salary.)
But wait... the saga is not quite over! The reason I've been stressing out over this so massively is not simply because my current visa expires on September 30 (overstaying by a few days isn't illegal as long as it's simply because you're waiting for a new application to be approved). Instead it's because literally the very next day - October 1st - I have an interview for a 2 million research grant that I am a finalist for (and have better than a 1/3 shot at). That interview is in Brussels and so I have to leave the country to attend - or kiss that money goodbye.
So the fun part is that - according to the terms in my notice - I still can't leave the country until I have the new permit, and I have to receive it in person and it is going to be sent to my apartment, by courier, with mandatory ID check, on some unknown day "within 7 business days". Given that I work for a living (and am about to start teaching classes for the semester!) this is more than a minor inconvenience and there is a real risk that it comes in the middle of a class or something I will simply miss it and (if the delivery can't be rescheduled) also miss my interview. More stress ahead.