Media storm

If you follow our most important news publications you cannot fail to have noticed the media storm around TLOML's plight.

No, I'm not talking about the Ash problem:

This photo only works if you know TLOML's true identity.

Admittedly when I say 'most important news publications' I mean the Independent, and our local free-sheet the Camden New Journal. And when I say 'follow' I mean 'read the letters pages'.

Both have printed my eloquently ranty letter about TLOML's ridiculous visa limbo situation.

As I've mentioned before, I love a good local rag. The CNJ is a genuinely good one - and I like it even more since it published my letter.

I'm pretty sure that neither letter will make any difference to the speed of our case. Probably rather more effective is the personal letter writing campaign TLOML is now embarked upon, barraging the Border Agency with pressing reasons for them to make an 'expedited' (if a process which should only take weeks, and which takes over 3 months can truly be said to be expedited) decision.

Still, I enjoyed writing the letters - and seeing my name in print. (If only it was on the spine of a best-selling paperback.)

Still grounded...

TLOML is still bound to these fair isles. Not because of a hurricane. Not because he has become addicted to Maynards Wine Gums (though that represents a real and present risk).

But because he still does not have his settlement visa, and his passport is therefore still being held hostage by the UK Border Agency.

Obsessive, furious surfing of the interwebs reveals a lot of others in the same boat. We are now frequent visitors to the brilliant 'What do they know' site, which shows various requests for facts from the UK BA, under the Freedom of Information Act, and their responses to date. Most of the inquiries are politely asking 'WHAT THE FRACK ARE YOU PEOPLE DOING IN THERE? YOU'RE TOYING WITH OUR LIVES!'. Only without the green ink and shouty caps.

We scour the pages of What Do They Know looking for glimmers of hope. All we find are damning indictments of the UK BA's processing times. This poor lady has been waiting 8 months for her visa. This guy is like a dog with a bone, unearthing the fact that they don't even start processing your application till after you complete your biometrics (our biometrics were requested about 2 months after we sent the application. Goodness knows what they do with that 2 months. Probably spent it responding to Freedom of Information requests...).  This lady found out that, as of October, almost three quarters of applications made between February and June were still outstanding.

We could have a long wait ahead. So what's at stake here, if TLOML can't leave the country? Well, we could miss the chance to visit TLOML's mum for Thanksgiving or Christmas (and perhaps sneak in a little babymoon in Miami en route). More to the point, his US clients would love to see him face to face for the first time in months.

Really, much as he loves Britain and wine gums, TLOML doesn't want to be trapped here for months on end. And much as I love it here too, I can't help but agree. It's weird to be wishing your husband would go to Vegas, but I really do.

Grrrr.

Grounded (WARNING - long and slightly ranty post)

A few years ago I published an interactive novel, called Face the Consequences. It is a 'choose your own adventure' in which the reader could decide what the lead character would do next, click on the link of their choice and see where it took them. Some of the routes were (literally) dead ends. Other choices would force the reader back to reconsider your decision. Most of the options lead to a longer, more linear narrative, some with happy endings and some less so.

If you haven't checked it out, please do.

If you have checked it out, for a similarly complex set of options and 'endings', I can highly recommend the UK Border Agency website.

Start, as TLOML have, with 'Visas for partners of people who are settled here'. Click on the fiance visa partner visa page and then choose to 'apply from within the UK' since TLOML is very much present and correct within the UK. That'll give you some info on eligbility and some forms to fill in to apply.

Hang on a second, you say, we already filled all those forms in, and proved we have a place to live, I have a UK passport, and provided detail on the colour of our socks, our annual apple consumption, and other vital data. Isn't there a faster route?

Choose 'can you apply' to find references to something called 'switching'. This is just exactly for people like TLOML and I -  a faster process which takes into account the process we went through for the fiance visa, 6 months ago. Sounds good, right? Want to know more?

Too bad. I'll spare you a few mouse clicks and tell you know that whatever you next click on will yield you no further information on this 'switching' process: no forms, timelines, fees, or avenues to advice.

Let's call that a dead end. We did, anyway. Instead we applied for the full visa, submitting a mountain of supporting evidence, a whopping £800, and both our passports.

According to various pages on the UK Border Agency website (I'll spare you the circuitous routes to the information, just trust me on this one), the process can take 5 weeks, 12 weeks, or 6 months. We thought that range was a little broad so tried to make a 'one day' appointment, only to learn that there were no appointments on any date between July and December. His fiance visa expired end August, so we started the postal process assuming it would be faster.

7 weeks later we have heard nothing and - of course - there's no way to check the status of your application. Meanwhile we are both grounded. I've cancelled 2 business trips (nothing quite like telling Big Corp you can't go to work because you don't have a passport...) and TLOML is on the verge of cancelling his. This all massively sucks, especially as he can only effectively work when he's in the US.

I'm considering embarking on an angry letter writing campaign but of course, it's not really clear from the BA website, who to write to. Meanwhile TLOML is UK-bound, and a making a go of his new career as house husband.

Harumph.

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One more example of this website's twists and turns... Just for shits and giggles, let's say you click on a link entitled 'Family settlement changes - online applications and new forms', in search of access to that online process and those forms.. You'll get nowhere. Just a press release blurb. No links, no nothing. 

When I put in those dead ends and loops in Face the Consequences I did so to keep the reader entertained for longer. Perhaps that's the Border Agency's purpose too. After all, till we have the visa TLOML cannot work: working his way through the BA website maze will occupy all those quiet house husband afternoons.

Ash Wednesday

7am, Heathrow

 TLOML got there before me, and after a quick hello I insisted on posing for this photo. Which I know is odd. But I had this great idea about how cute it would be to there waiting with my little sign: I at least wanted a photo of my (poorly executed) idea.

He's here! Let the next chapter begin! Flathunting in NW5 tomorrow...

Hopefully, the final chapter of the comic saga that is our visa application

The mountain of paperwork relating to our visa application grows, as the comedy of errors continues. I say it's a comedy because I assume it will have a happy ending. The calm tone of the nice visa official who told me 'You're just missing a couple of documents now' suggested that the end is, at least, in sight.

But first, we need to provide those documents. The 140pp of evidence was not enough. We omitted to provide a copy of the deeds to my parents' home (our official UK residence), and a notarized copy of my passport. Silly us.

I said to the nice visa official, 'I'm sorry we missed those out. To be honest we have struggled to find guidance on the evidence required'. With a sniff, he told me there is ample guidance on the Border Agency website. I looked again. There really isn't. They direct you to the application form, which is apparently packed full of very clear advice on what to provide. Hmm. Unless I'm missing something, this visa form is pretty devoid of guidance on the required evidence. When this is all over I might just write a strongly worded letter to someone in authority about this form.

Meanwhile, we need to get those documents in the post to the nice visa official in NYC. My dad got on the case of the deeds pretty quickly*, and I just had the small matter of providing a notarized copy of my passport.

The thing is, I'm in Rio, and I don't speak the language. Unless broken Spanish and the odd 'obrigada' count. Fortunately I have some very helpful colleagues with a little bit of time on their hands. They made several, inexplicably long phone calls, with much laughter and words like 'Inglesa'  being bandied about. Not sure what was so funny or why it took so long but I'm very grateful for their patience and good humour. We're actually here to work, not take care of my personal admin, you see.

Instead of spending our Friday morning 'shaping our thinking' in front of a whiteboard, we spent it securing the services of a notary. First, we had to get a 'sworn translation' of my passport. The Brazilian notary won't authenticate something not written in Portugese. Even if it is words like 'NAME/ NOM' and 'SEX/ SEXE'. Rules is rules I suppose.

A lovely rotund man named Riccardo translated my passport overnight, for £20, and threw in two calendars. He also provided a curbside service, coming out in his flipflops, shorts and wifebeater to hand me the translation as we waited in our cab. What's more, I got a free a language lesson: when I said 'Molto obrigada', he scolded me, 'Molto is Italian, here in Brazil we say 'moito'. Now that's good value.

Language lesson over, we headed to the notary office, where trade was pretty slow: three notary dudes stood waiting, dot matrix printers and carbon copy pads at the ready. Five minutes and £10 later I had a fuzzy black and white copy of my passport, notarized in Portugese.

New additions to the paper mountain: several pages of my panicky scrawl, the notes from my colleagues' many phone calls to find me a notary, a free calendar, and oh, yes, a couple of pages of bureaucratic necessities.

I think we are nearly there. Crossing everything that this works...

*Would have been quicker if I'd got the address right. I told him to post it to 84 Third Ave, NY NY, not 845. It's a small detail but that's exactly the kind of muppetry that has extended this process. Fortunately I'm too busy being cross with the Border Agency website to kick myself for minor errors.

Moving home

I'm home. Back in my old 'hood, staying at a much-loved friend's much-loved flat in the heart of dear old Kentish Town.

Actually, since home is where the heart is, technically I am not really home. My heart remains in New York. TLOML is still there, sorting out his visa.

We may have been a little overconfident when we made our initial visa application. We were so sure of the outcome that we didn't investigate the process particularly closely. So when the application form stated 'You will be required to provide evidence of your relationship history and plans to marry', we just blithely assumed that we would be asked for that evidence further down the line. A week later the application came back, rejected, because we had not provided any evidence. Very frustrating, and a very expensive mistake.

We won't make the same omission second time around. In a frenzied day, between considering a Vegas wedding, running over the precise meaning of the phrase 'you will be...' time and time again, and of course doing all our leaving NY errands, we managed to amass over 140 pages of evidence of our relationship. TLOML organised and indexed it with lawyerly precision.

It's a watertight application, now we know what we're actually doing. Still, while it's in process, TLOML has to stay in New York.

The new visa application. Solid.

Meanwhile I had to return to London, and start work. I felt strangely bereft when I left Manhattan yesterday. I wasn't sure if it was sadness at waving goodbye to homeless, visa-less TLOML, or a poignant moment as the US chapter of my life has closed. Whatever it was, leaving New York on my one way flight was not the purely positive experience one might expect, given how long I've looked forward to moving home. Yes, I definitely felt a bit wobbly.

And then... and then I landed. I haven't been here since last summer, which is the longest I've ever been away.  (Shamefully, I returned to London 4 times in my first 3 months of living in LA.). London is just wonderful. Maybe it's the pre-Olympic clean up operation. Maybe it was the early morning sunshine, before the inevitable grey skies gathered. Maybe it's just wish fulfilment. But I have never seen London look so lovely, all at once friendly, elegant, and welcoming.


Now all I need is TLOML.

Permission to wed

TLOML has just applied for his marriage visa. Johnny Foreigners need marriage visas if they are to be allowed to marry one of Her Majesty the Queen's loyal subjects. Quite right too.

 

The marriage visa form is about a hundred pages long and most of the umpteen questions they ask appear to be aimed at mail order spouses. 'Have you met your future spouse?' and 'How many times?' made us chuckle. TLOML's answer to 'Where is your future spouse at the present time?' was 'Looking over my shoulder.' Not sure we needed to be that specific, but it's the truth at least.

Questions like 'How many bedrooms does the house you are moving into have? How many other rooms? How people live there curently? How many people will you move in with?' abound too. I suppose that's how they spot the poor souls who want to squeeze nine relatives into a bedsit.

There isn't a box you can tick to say 'we're just two engaged people, and one of us happens to be a bit foreign'. I mean, we're not getting married for the visa. We're getting the visa so we can get married. So he filled in the forms and tried not to snigger as he did so.

A couple of days later the forms got returned. It seems the passport photo TLOML had enclosed was not up to scratch and we needed to send a different one.

TLOML was out of town so I was in charge of this simple job. Reprinting the photo meant operating his Mac, and changing our printer settings, and feeding photo paper in, which I know isn't that complicated but it was a bit beyond me. Then I had to buy a Money Order to pay the visa people for the extra postage costs they had to incur in returning the unprocessed visa form to us, which in itself meant googling 'what is a money order?' and then standing in line at the post office. Finally I had to FedEx the thing, which required me to print a FedEx label out, which kept printing out weird 'cos of the new photo settings, and then finding a FedEx envelope with an address label pouch on it, which again, is not that complicated but was just beyond my capabilities.

The whole operation took about half a day. And several increasingly tense calls to TLOML for guidance in printer settings, where the photo paper is kept, how the FedEx thing works etc etc. I must say, I don't know how anyone with a full time job and poor internet access can apply for the visa at all. Which presumably is part of the point. Pause to reflect... if I had to apply for a British visa for myself, would I meet the standard? I almost failed at the first hurdle, putting the damn form in the post.

Anyway, it's done now and our fate is in the hands of the good people at the British Consulate. Keep your fingers crossed TLOML gets the visa. For one thing, we've put a deposit down on the venue, and I'd hate to lose it. And since he truly is The Love of My Life I don't think I'll find another groom who's even half as good.

Meanwhile, TLOML has announced to me he would like to be a 'non dom'. Grr. (American readers - non-doms are evil Tory taxdodging jet set types, who avoid paying tax by claiming they are not 'domiciled' in England). In my (left wing, tax-loving) mind that's almost grounds for divorce. But I suppose that's a bit premature...