After arriving back from our Australia trip with 14 days left on our visa, and the UK government changing all the visa rules, we have spent 2 work days, £2000 and an overnight trip to Sheffield to try and stay in the country.
The UK government is cracking down on immigration (Cameron just made a big speach about it today) and they changed all the rules about who can come in and how many people they are letting in each year. Luckily my company is allowed to sponser me and I fall inside the list of people they are allowed to keep in the country. We had a day of panic the day before the visa expired because the UK borders department was dragging its heals issuing a new certificate of sponsorship. There was serious talk of going to Paris or Dublin to leave the country so were weren't here as illegals :)
Because of the rule changes there are tons of people who are applying at the moment so the only place we could get an appointment in time was Sheffield (which isn't the same when it is Fullfordless). We got to see the city the same way we normally see places when we are travelling for ultimate, which is, arrive late, sleep, spend all day in one location that could be anywhere in the world, have 20 mins to see something about the place, the leave. Looking outside from the train, it seems really pretty and we will have to come back.
We are now in the situation where we are hoping to get our passports back before next Wednesday, so we can go to Italy for the Easter long weekend.
Damm...that sucks. Hope that it all works out.
ReplyDeleteWeren't we supposed to have a United Earth Government by now so that we don't have do any of this visa rubbish anymore - or has all that science fiction I read lied to me again.