Dec 06 2008
I thought I was lucky
I just have been told to stop work at the hospital until I show them my passport. I really thought I was lucky for not paying anything for my visa or residence card application. My husband’s friend, an Algerian who is married to an English, had to pay around £460 for his visa or what they call “definite leave to remain”. For an outsider, coming to the UK with a marriage visa could be really expensive. First you must pay £500 for a marriage visa to come to the UK which is valid for 6 months. After you get married, you have to change your visa status to definite leave to remain which is valid for 2 years and it costs £460. After the 2 years you then qualify for an indefinite leave to remain which costs a whooping £700.
But being married to an Italian who is an EU citizen and resides in the UK I didn’t have to pay for the visas except for the marriage one. So I thought I was lucky. But I was proven wrong. The process takes ages. I sent in my application first of August and according to them it is resolved within 6 months.
However, I should be glad because the Home Office sent me a letter to show my prospective employers that I am now allowed to work whilst my application is being processed. But I have been turned down by those prospective employers because the letter obviously is not a legal document. They want to see my passport with the visa in it.
Now the real problem is how long I’m gonna have to wait. As it appears in the website the applications they are working on now is those submitted before February 2008 and now is December 2008. I submitted my application in August. And my employer told me I can go back to work when I get my passport back. Sigh!
