No news is.... no news?
So, I took JJL's advice and tried to get the Brit consulate to send a word to the home office in the hopes of speeding up the process, or at least getting my documents back in the interim. First, I emailed. I received an automated response back, which offered nothing helpful. No surprise. The website says the public needs to book an appointment to see anyone, but there seemed to be no option for setting up an appointment. (insert eye roll). So, since I'm in a major urban centre, I simply walked on over a couple days later. It was quite weird. The Consulate is in a major office building, located behind a locked glass door. You can't see the secretary, but there is a phone in the hallway. You pick it up and can speak to her. I tried explaining the situation, but it seemed clear she wasn't familiar with the UKF app in particular (no surprise there either), and she seemed to think I was just waiting for a certificate to come to them at the Consulate. I explained that I was waiting for my documents to come directly back to me, plus a letter perhaps inviting me to set up a biometrics appointment. She wasn't really paying attention, and didn't seem to be familiar with this process, but she eventually offered to write the Home Office an email. This was last thursday. Today I received an email from someone at the Home Office. It read:
"We have been asked to contact you by the post abroad as you have requested a progress report on the status of your application. I can confirm we received your request for application for Naturalisation in October 2015, please note it can take six months or more from the date of receipt for an application to be dealt with. If an application is successful it can take up 12 weeks for the paper work to be received at the post abroad."
So, while it was nice to get a reply, it basically raises more questions than it answers. First, they seem to be giving themselves even more time than they lay out in the UKF guide. 6+ months + 12 weeks? Secondly, despite the acknowledgement, it's weird that the person said 'application for naturalisation', because citizenship by descent is decidedly not naturalisation. In fact, it's basically the other option of two. Naturalisation people can pass down citizenship, whereas 'by descent' people cannot. So it seems like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is talking about. I imagine that the secretary at the Consulate messed up a bit of the information in her email to the Head Office (I saw that coming a mile away, since she seemed so fuzzy on the UKF procedure), so she may have emailed them about 'Naturalisation', and thus, the reply I received may indeed be a stock response to a 'naturalisation' process enquiry. However, since the person at the Home Office also confirmed my application, you would think that any confusion would be cleared up when they looked into it.
Sooo... are they not paying attention? Did the person who replied not look into it any more than superficially? Is it even being dealt with? Reminder- they took the ceremony fee from my card on Oct 12th, so I would imagine somebody somewhere knows something.
Anyway, I had been hoping I would be on a somewhat similar timeline to JJL or Ben in Australia, but I get the feeling I'm in for a long one... Darn.
Timeline:
UKF app arrives Liverpool: Oct 2nd
Card charged ceremony fee: Oct 12th
No acknowledgement at any point.
Email to national enquiries at 4 weeks. No response.
Email to Further National Enquiries 2 weeks later. No response.
Email to Consulate Nov 23rd. No response (except automated).
Visit to Consulate Nov 26th. Promise of email.
Email back from Home Office with wrong information: December 2nd.
Not having your passport for the holidays? Priceless.