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fozmeadows's profile
Foz Meadows
Foz Meadows
Foz Meadows
@fozmeadows

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Foz Meadows

@fozmeadows

Author, fanwriter, trash bandit, queer geek feminist, dork. Jack of all pronouns, mxtress of none. Yells about hockey. Aussie in the US.

Irvine, CA
fozmeadows.wordpress.com
Joined February 2009

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    1. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

      This is justified because, as stated, the whole place is just a shed - there's no walls between the testing & waiting areas, and they don't want child-noise to distract the test-takers. So anyone with a small child has to wait with them outside. IN SCOTLAND. IN WINTER.

      2 replies 111 retweets 600 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

      If an adult showed up alone with a baby? They would've been turned away. Parents who came in pairs had to take turns with their kid outside, where there was no shelter and no place to sit. In 4C weather, I saw a frozen woman cradling a baby in arms as she paced in the wind.

      4 replies 95 retweets 521 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

      My husband and I were "lucky" - we'd driven there, so we had the car to sit in. My husband went first while I waited in the car with our son. Fifteen minutes passed. My husband came back, visibly shaking. He hadn't been allowed to even sit the test. Why?

      2 replies 72 retweets 447 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

      Because on the dropdown form he'd filled out online, he'd accidentally clicked that he was bringing a different type of valid ID to the one he'd actually brought. So even though he had valid ID on him, even though it was the matter of a single mis-checked box, they refused him.

      3 replies 85 retweets 535 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

      Next, it was my turn. Now, at that time, my passport was still in my maiden name, because I'd got it just in advance of our wedding to go on our overseas honeymoon. This had posed no issue when getting my visa to the UK, or in opening a bank account there in my married name.

      1 reply 65 retweets 434 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

      As I'd done in every other instance, I'd brought my original marriage certificate with me, because all my utilities, bank statements etc referred to me by my married name. Again: this documentation had been sufficient to get me INTO THE ACTUAL COUNTRY and to work and bank there.

      1 reply 75 retweets 505 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

      But to sit the fucking citizenship test in a shed in Dundee? Oh, no. For that, I was told, only BRITISH marriage certificates could be accepted. Never mind that I was from a Commonwealth country: I was likewise deemed to have insufficient ID and turned away.

      4 replies 90 retweets 583 likes
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    8. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

      I asked if I could speak to a supervisor; no, there wasn't anyone higher around than the woman I was dealing with. Could I call the relevant office for help? No; it was Saturday, nobody would answer. The office was closed. So we had to turn around and drive right back home.

      1 reply 69 retweets 449 likes
      Show this thread
    9. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

      On the basis of this, we decided we didn't want to stay in the UK anymore, but we still needed to renew our expiring visas. Which, as they were ancestry visas, meant: a) paying around £2000 for the three of us; and b) sending in huge quantities of original ID documents.

      4 replies 98 retweets 593 likes
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    10. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

      These documents included: all our passports, original marriage certificate, all our original birth certificates, my MOTHER'S original birth certificate, my GRANDFATHER'S original long-form birth certificate, bank & utility statements, original work contracts - EVERYTHING.

      2 replies 73 retweets 503 likes
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      Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

      By the time we came to send this all off in late November 2015, my husband had a job offer back in Australia, so we planned to leave the UK in April - we only need the visas extended for the next five months. So we send our stuff off, and we wait. And wait. And wait.

      3:01 PM - 9 Aug 2018
      • 63 Retweets
      • 435 Likes
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      1 reply 63 retweets 435 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          We can see from our bank statements that the UK visa authority has taken the £2000-odd pounds processing fee from us, but we're into 2016 and haven't heard anything - until, in late January, we get a letter telling us that our application and all our documents have been lost.

          11 replies 122 retweets 561 likes
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        3. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          Specifically: having received our application at their first processing centre, the visa authority took our money, made NO OTHER RECORD OF OUR APPLICATION, and then send our docs on to their other centre, via the REGULAR-ASS UNPROTECTED MAIL SERVICE, whose post depot flooded.

          8 replies 125 retweets 628 likes
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        4. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          Ours was not the only application thus affected. In fact, we were later told by the Australian consulate, fuckups of this nature are *common* to the UK visa authority, who are apparently known for being careless with documents, slow, & generally incompetent by other governments.

          3 replies 190 retweets 830 likes
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        5. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          So: we need new passports in order to leave the country. But to get new passports, we need new supporting documentation. And all those documents WERE ALSO LOST. And me? My passport is my only photo ID. So we had to get my mother IN AUSTRALIA to get a new birth cert for me.

          2 replies 77 retweets 540 likes
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        6. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          We then had to organise, and pay out of pocket for, a two-day trip to London (where the consulate is) FROM ABERDEEN, to get new passports in an expedited, not-reliant-on-the-Royal-Mail fashion. Which, again, cost us about £2000 out of pocket. It KILLED our savings.

          3 replies 74 retweets 525 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          In the end, the UK visa authority refunded us for the application they couldn't process, and returned our "lost" documents (which evidently weren't destroyed by water after all) to us. But by then, it was late in 2016, almost a full year after we'd applied, and we were in Aus.

          3 replies 89 retweets 563 likes
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        8. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          We never recovered or were compensated for the additional £2000 we lost having to sort things out, and because of THEIR ERROR, the UK visa authority now flags all our passports whenever we enter the UK, because for some reason, they need a re-explanation of what happened.

          7 replies 101 retweets 641 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          The entire 5 years we lived in the UK - as well-off, white, English-speaking, Commonwealth citizens - the UK visa authority was a hostile, incomprehensible, unpleasant, stressful entity to deal with. That's it's baseline mode: it is profoundly more vile to anyone less privileged.

          13 replies 586 retweets 1,891 likes
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        10. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          It's a cold, hard fact that dealing with the UK visa authority trashed both my husband's and my mental health and left us in a financial hole which, without the support of solvent, caring family members, we would never have climbed out of. Years later, we're only just recovering.

          42 replies 223 retweets 1,171 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          How an entity so comprehensively dedicated to intransigence and bureaucratic pettifogging can possibly hope to deal with the hugely expanded workload necessitated by a hard #Brexit is beyond me. They simply won't cope, and any UK citizens wanting visas should beware.

          10 replies 203 retweets 937 likes
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        12. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          In all respects, the UK visa authority almost perfectly fits the description that Douglas Adams famously gave to his Vogons: "Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous" - the "almost" is because these days, yeah: they actually ARE evil, too.

          9 replies 267 retweets 1,397 likes
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        13. Foz Meadows‏ @fozmeadows 9 Aug 2018

          In conclusion: the marriage of xenophobia and bureaucratic incompetence is one of the ugliest in the modern world, and that's saying something. The UK isn't alone in perpetuating this particular evil, so let it be a lesson to everyone on a similar path to FIX THAT SHIT NOW. FIN

          191 replies 341 retweets 2,546 likes
          Show this thread
        14. End of conversation

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