Thank you everyone who found my last post on the last page useful. Just an extra note to keep your eyes wide peeled for the postman when he comes back with the package with your documents, including hopefully the Residence Card in the passport! We had one come around in late February 2015 and from the videocam at home, I can see he had a package for us, because he rang our flat number and I could see clearly in the video. We were both all in pyjamas then (!!) — we can get up a little late at times (on Sundays, for example, everything opens up late!).
We missed the postman by just a few minutes. I saw there was nothing delivered in our postbox. Because I had read there were cases the documents went to the wrong people, and because I was a little suspicious of this happening in our flat (we later found that a lot of people in our flat complex had post problems, so it was not just "our" problem!), I immediately rang the Post Office / Royal Mail via mobile phone, and was actually quite serious with them, saying if this went to the wrong hands they could be in legal trouble! I then re-checked our "planted" Signed For numbers. Nothing happened.
I also have to tell you it never hurts to call the Home Office on legitimate grounds. I called them next and quickly explained them the situation, as well as ask if it was really our package and if not, how our case was doing. They responded in saying it was still early days and a decision has not been made back then. For the next few days we remained on very high alert, checking post boxes everytime we came in and went out the home. The casual observer would have thought we were crazy, but then it never hurts to just double-check!
Finally a little note on the "response" letter we got from the UK Home Office, along with our files. Ours read a little bit like this:
• "I am returning your document which features an endorsement confirming your status."
-> This is a remark about them sticking the Residence Card on your passport. Your status is indeed created when you first legally enter the UK, so the EEA / (Swiss) Family Permit already creates this, even if you had one given to you at the border!
• "At present your only claim to remain in the [UK] is as the family member of a Swiss national who is exercising Treaty rights here."
-> The Swiss (that's me!) doesn't need to do anything, in fact, as long as the Swiss does not apply his weight against the benefits system! Work is not "mandatory" if you have a lot of cash, but as we come from family backgrounds where we were educated that "if you want something, work hard, don't slack", we considered "work" to be "the normal".
• "If your family member decides to leave the [UK], or ceases exercise Treaty rights, or if you cease to be a family member, you would have to qualify to remain in the [UK] in your own right.
-> Basically this means if the Swiss leaves on his / her own, or leans too heavily on the UK benefits system, or if a divorce happens. Other ways this can be lost, theoretically, includes losing Swiss citizenship (in practice almost-impossible in this "peaceful" era unless you gave it up or lost it due to getting a new nationality which does not permit dual / multiple nationality).
-> This doesn't really mean you will have to leave the UK, as there is the "retention" route.
• "This Directorate should be notified immediately..."
-> Again you should inform the UK Home Office if any of the above is the case. This can be a little tricky to do at airports unless any new government after 07 / 08 May 2015 re-institutes "full" exit controls (like at Zürich Airport and Beijing Airport, just to mention a few), but it is the law nonetheless.
It is also interesting they returned all photocopies, which is good actually since it saves all that paper being reprinted just to apply for the non-Swiss family member any further visa for a third country.
We too were always prepared for a Home Visit, not because there was anything to "fake" (of course not), it was just we didn't quite like anyone outside our family to see the home "like a war zone" (as my wife would say; this would happen sometimes if I reorganised what must seem to be a trillion documents). Given we kept late hours, it would have been a problem if they called at, for example, 07:00 when at our place it was only "lights off" a few hours earlier! Of course there was nothing to worry about.
Finally out of organisational considerations I would also suggest maybe putting sets of files together and into transparent file organisers (in German it's «Zeigetaschen» I think, a little bit at a loss to translate this directly into English) and to label them all with the applicant's name, passport number, and type of document. This was what kept me up until 05:30 in the morning (!) but I personally think it made the life of the caseworker less h*ll. Ultimately it might get you your documents back, if only earlier by a day! I think you get better results if you work with them rather than imagining them to be foes that must be cornered.
PS: Also a note that applicants on and after 06 April 2015 will have to pay £ 65.— (£ 10.— increase) + the extra fee of the biometrics, I know this is obviously not the news we want to hear! Not "any" Post Office will do; you will have to find one with biometrics collection devices, but they should be clearly labelled as such. Also the new EEA (FM) form (old EEA2 / EEA4 form) will contain 137 pages (!!), but then you might want to check which pages you need exactly and only print these. Hopefully with them asking you the thousands of questions on the form, they could probably speed up the process by identifying early signs of fake relationships.
(I'm not an immigration professional! Just a normal citizen who has been scared by the system so much, I now read everything at least ten times so to sure I know what to expect!)
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