My husband and I first moved to the UK in January 2011. He'd been given a position at a good university there - however, because the Tories had slashed the number of visas any uni was allowed to sponsor, they were unable to sponsor him even though they'd hired him.
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Fortunately for us, my maternal grandfather was born in the UK, which meant I was eligible for an ancestry visa. A much more expensive visa than a sponsored one would've been, but it came with greater protections and my husband could work as my spouse. So we opted to do that.
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Of course, in visa-language, "spouse" is code for "woman who does not work," so there was no designated space on my husband's spousal visa application to include his offer of work. We had to put all that info in as an extra detail and hope they noticed.
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The whole process was expensive, labrynthine & nervewracking, but in the end, we got to the UK. Fast forward three years, and our son is born in England in 2014. Because the UK has no jus soli, he has no British citizenship; we have to apply to have him recognised as Australian.
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This also means that we need to get him a passport so that he can one day leave the country. Which means travelling, in person, to a far-distant visa authority office, which is basically a warehouse, with an infant in tow. We were there for about SEVEN HOURS.
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Fun fact about visa authority offices: even though it's legally required for children and babies to attend under various circumstances, they contain absolutely zero provisions for people attending with small children. Seven hours in a warehouse with no baby change tables.
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We were only able to get hot water to mix with my son's formula by asking to use the employee kitchen, and even then, the guards wouldn't let us in there; they brought us the water, with several frowning and lowkey chiding us as though we had any say in being there with him.
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I'll note, too, that consulates are similarly restrictive about the needs of babies, but at least they have the excuse of actual security risks to consider and try to run smoothly and on time to compensate for it. The UK visa authority warehouses? Not so much.
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Fastforward again to 2015: we're living in Scotland and considering applying for permanent residency, which means taking the UK citizenship test. The visa processing centre in Aberdeen had been closed, so we had to drive five hours to the one in Dundee after prepaying etc online.
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No, I mean Dundee. We used to live in St Andrews when we first came to the UK; I even worked in Dundee for a while. But it is very distant from Aberdeen.
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Replying to @fozmeadows @realname675245
I used to be able to Dundee and back from Aberdeen in about 2-3 hours
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