New citizenship form UKF

[ninadf]

Thanks CR001, yes, my father is named on my birth certificate (and it even says on it that he was born in London) and his name will match his birth certificate (I've requested a copy which is hopefully being sent to me as we speak).
My mum was born in Kenya and became an Australian citizen, so nothing to do with the UK side of things.

[bright_star]

bright_star, saw that you sent me a private message, but when I try to read it here is what happens: "You are not authorised to read private messages." Can you email me at email address removed by moderator?

Hey Ana, thanks for your reply. Sent u an email yesterday. My email is email address removed by moderator

[CR001]

Members and users in this thread should please take note of point 5 in the Terms & Conditions of the Forum (click)

The forum is very public and open to genuine users and spammers.

[bright_star]

Members and users in this thread should please take note of point 5 in the Terms & Conditions of the Forum (click)

The forum is very public and open to genuine users and spammers.

Oh, I am sorry, CR001!

[g_barrie_g]

Hello everyone,

It's been months now since I logged into this. I have noticed that there are a lot of new ukf applicants.

For the sake of sharing this to my co-ukf hopefulls I will be giving you all an update.

I have already received a letter from UKVI on december 23 2015. It was dated 4 Dec 2015.
It stated that my application is sucessful. In the letter, it says that I will receive my Invitation of Oath from British Embassy Manila shortly.

Happy new year everyone!

[lagos1980]

Hello everyone,

It's been months now since I logged into this. I have noticed that there are a lot of new ukf applicants.

For the sake of sharing this to my co-ukf hopefulls I will be giving you all an update.

I have already received a letter from UKVI on december 23 2015. It was dated 4 Dec 2015.
It stated that my application is sucessful. In the letter, it says that I will receive my Invitation of Oath from British Embassy Manila shortly.

Happy new year everyone!

Congratulations g_barrie! Your approval took about 5 months then, I'm at 5 months and 1 week, so I hope to hear good news by the end of the month.

[imai]

Hi everyone i have been a silent observer for a longtime. I applied for citizenship for my daughter on the 1of September 2015 using the Ukf form she did Biometrics in November and the certificate of registration came today. We live in the UK

[JJL]

Dear All

So I emailed the further nationality enquiries last week enquiring about how to do an address change from outside the UK, and I very pleasantly received a response saying a decision has been made an a letter was posted to me on 18 December 2015.

So hopefully the letter is positive and if so, that would mean my timelines were as follows:

Application sent from South Africa and received by the Home Office on 20 September 2015;
Ceremony Fee deducted on 28 September 2015;
Biometrics done 06 November;
Decision made and posted on 18 December 2015, and should probably arrive with me on 18 January 2016.

That means the process up until receiving the letter has been exactly 4 months, and my experience with the Home Office and their service has been outstanding!! I hope that gives some hope to new applicants and good luck to everyone! I will keep you updated.

[Antsmall]

I've been waiting for eight months and they haven't even sent me a biometrics letter. I live in the USA and I asked for a biometrics letter for Vancouver, like so many applicants here, and I still have nothing. (And I am one of the small number of people whose years of campaigning actually brought about the legal reform that caused the UKF route to exist in the first place). I have no criminal record or even a parking ticket or late library book, and I provided both a birth certificate with my father's name AND a DNA test proving paternity as well as, of course, all the other documents required. Still they won't even let me talk to anyone with any decisive power or even the ability to send a message to the people actually processing applications.

So no, I don't think the Home Office is fantastic and wonderful all round. Even if it randomly manages to do its job some of the time, it is not an efficient or laudable institution if it also randomly lets others languish like this, and if it is set up so that applicants are prevented from even sending a message to decision-makers when things go badly wrong.

[JJL]

Hi Antsmall

I am so sorry to have heard and followed your terrible experience during this process. My updates are simply to give some hope to new applicants that the process can in fact run smoothly, and for me personally as well as others on this forum the process has been somewhat painless. I think that is one of the purposes of this forum. I can only empathise with your frustrations and I hope somehow you receive some positive news.

All the best.

[Antsmall]

Thanks. I am so very sick of the Home Office's invariable incompetence and unaccountability and I hope that I too can benefit from the law that I helped to create after so many years of struggle and heartache. Good luck to us all, and may we soon be in a position never to have to deal with these dithering automata again.

[Antsmall]

Well, yet another problem has arisen, and I hope that someone can help me.

I finally received my biometric letter by email (nearly two months after attempting to request it, mind you) and, with short-lived jubilation, I followed all the instructions on the VFS Global website. I created an account, created an application, paid their ten-pound application fee, and so on. But when I clicked on 'schedule an appointment' from the page summarising all my details (including my UKN reference number, acknowledgement of my fee having been paid, my full name, and so on) I just got a page called "Applicant List" bearing the single badly constructed sentence "Either Appointment details are not found or appointment has already taken, please check with rescheduling appointment". That's it. No 'help' page, nothing to click on except their homepage, nothing. I tried the 'reschedule' function, which of course rejected me because... I didn't have an original appointment date. Because they wouldn't let me make one in the first place. So all I've accomplished so far is to donate ten pounds in exchange for zero services.

I tried in Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Safari. No joy. (No surprises).

VFS Global's contact page redirects to the general visa page, and the visa centres, including the one in Vancouver, provide no email or phone number as far as I can see. This is, of course, in keeping with the almost fetishistic refusal to be contacted which is displayed by the Home Office and its various tentacles according to my longish and utterly gruesome experience. Their modus operandi appears to be:
a) Automate everything;
b) Make all the automated things buggy and incredibly badly designed; and
c) Provide no human contact or manual override for the unworkable automated things.

I really hope that someone can help me with this, because what I see in my future is that after spending so many years campaigning for the UKF citizenship route, and after waiting an incredible eight months just for the wretched biometric letter, I'll have my citizenship application rejected because I missed the biometric deadline due to a badly designed website. And here I was thinking that after all that waiting I could finally be allowed to be happy.

Thanks for any help that anyone might give me. I'm so sick of being sad.

[Antsmall]

Contributor Will47786 found an email for the Canadian VFS Global people. Here's what he has to say:

Try this email address it might help. I used it and got a reply. Put the subject line of ATTENTION DUTY MANAGER. Keep sending them the same email until someone replies. I also put my phone numbers in the email as well and within 2 days I got a call and they helped me make an appointment in Vancouver to do my biometrics

UKVI.Feedback.ca@vfshelpline.com

I hope this helps for anyone else who has encountered issues with signing up for and getting biometric appointments with VFS Global. Let me know how it works out.

Will47786

The only other VFS Global help email that I know about is the one for India, which is info.inuk@vfshelpline.com.

It seems that if you go to this page http://www.vfsglobal.co.uk/Global/ and choose a country and then go to 'feedback and complaints', you will get a page like this
http://www.vfsglobal.co.uk/Canada/feedb ... aints.html
(mutatis mutandis, obviously) which will hopefully provide the appropriate email address for the country in question. It is rather sneaky of them to hide this in 'feedback and complaints' but not make it available in 'contacts'. Anyway, I hope this helps anyone who has trouble booking their biometric appointment.

[JJL]

Hello everyone,

It's been months now since I logged into this. I have noticed that there are a lot of new ukf applicants.

For the sake of sharing this to my co-ukf hopefulls I will be giving you all an update.

I have already received a letter from UKVI on december 23 2015. It was dated 4 Dec 2015.
It stated that my application is sucessful. In the letter, it says that I will receive my Invitation of Oath from British Embassy Manila shortly.

Happy new year everyone!

Hi G_Barrie

Have you received your Invitation of Oath yet? If so does your local embassy send this to you with a time and date?

And again, huge congrats on your successful application.

[g_barrie_g]

Hi G_Barrie

Have you received your Invitation of Oath yet? If so does your local embassy send this to you with a time and date?

And again, huge congrats on your successful application.

Hello JJL,

As of today no.

In the letter, the UKVI instructed me to e-mail the address that was given in case I have not recieved my Invitation from the British Embassy within 6 weeks. Today 15 Jan 2016 is exactlly 6 weeks from the date of the letter 4 Dec 2015.

I will still have to wait for a week before sending them an e-mail because of our multiple philippine holidays at the end of last year and at the beginning of this year.

The letter does not say if the Embassy will send my Invitation with time and date. It only says that once I recieved my Invitation from the Embassy that's the time I will contact the Embassy. And I think once I contact them thru phone that's the time to discuss the date and time of the ceremony.

Best wishes,
g_barrie_g

[SK413]

Hello everyone,

It's been months now since I logged into this. I have noticed that there are a lot of new ukf applicants.

For the sake of sharing this to my co-ukf hopefulls I will be giving you all an update.

I have already received a letter from UKVI on december 23 2015. It was dated 4 Dec 2015.
It stated that my application is sucessful. In the letter, it says that I will receive my Invitation of Oath from British Embassy Manila shortly.

Happy new year everyone!

Hi G_Barrie

Have you received your Invitation of Oath yet? If so does your local embassy send this to you with a time and date?

And again, huge congrats on your successful application.

Hi.
Same situation here with me. Letter said if I don't hear from British Embassy here in Barbados in 6 weeks then email them. Letter also states don't contact Embassy. My 6 weeks will run up to end of this month so I still have to wait.

[bfrenchfry]

Hello everyone,

It's been months now since I logged into this. I have noticed that there are a lot of new ukf applicants.

For the sake of sharing this to my co-ukf hopefulls I will be giving you all an update.

I have already received a letter from UKVI on december 23 2015. It was dated 4 Dec 2015.
It stated that my application is sucessful. In the letter, it says that I will receive my Invitation of Oath from British Embassy Manila shortly.

Happy new year everyone!

Hi G_Barrie

Have you received your Invitation of Oath yet? If so does your local embassy send this to you with a time and date?

And again, huge congrats on your successful application.

Hi.
Same situation here with me. Letter said if I don't hear from British Embassy here in Barbados in 6 weeks then email them. Letter also states don't contact Embassy. My 6 weeks will run up to end of this month so I still have to wait.

So they're finally approving applications, just not letting people have their ceremony. Just great. I'm at 9 months now, so even if I get approved tomorrow (ha yea right!) I'm probably still looking at another 2 before my ceremony...

[Antsmall]

Do these approval notices arrive by email or by post? If by post, are they by normal post or megagalactic registered post?

I'm sorry to hear that bfrenchfry is still waiting after nine months. I'm at eight months and only now received my biometric letter (by email), and that only after having requested it multiple times because of this business of the biometric centres not being open in the USA and us having to ask to do biometrics in Canada instead. Then the VFS appointment portal malfunctioned and I had to go through yet another ordeal of locating and contacting the VFS assistance people to set an appointment manually. Fingers crossed.

[Cloverbea]

Update....sort of....

We are going to the UK to try to get the process finished. We are taking a holiday and notifying Home Office of our intentions....fingers crossed :/

*Applied from the US September 2015 (I know not as long as many of you)
Gotten the runaround like many of you as well.....

[SK413]

Do these approval notices arrive by email or by post? If by post, are they by normal post or megagalactic registered post?

I'm sorry to hear that bfrenchfry is still waiting after nine months. I'm at eight months and only now received my biometric letter (by email), and that only after having requested it multiple times because of this business of the biometric centres not being open in the USA and us having to ask to do biometrics in Canada instead. Then the VFS appointment portal malfunctioned and I had to go through yet another ordeal of locating and contacting the VFS assistance people to set an appointment manually. Fingers crossed.

Hi.
Approval notices arrive by post. It's the brown envelope sent by Royal Mail. Mine was registered and I had to sign that I received it.
Really sorry for you guys on this long wait. Hope you get through quickly.

[Antsmall]

Thanks for the info. I suppose they want the confirmation of delivery that comes with registered mail, but it wouldn't kill them to send us a pdf by email as well so we could be happy a little sooner (and then send us the original by post, no problem). One could argue that sending pdfs to everyone would increase their workload, causing even greater delays for everyone. Anyway, come on Home Office, get cracking. No more nonsense.

[suzieG]

I'm hoping for some advice re UKf applications, and suggestions for our predicament. I am Australian and my husband is British. We have been in a de facto relationship for 30 yeArs and living in Australia. We have a 17 year old Australian born daughter who has just arrived in UK for her gap year (on a holiday visa) stopping with an aunt. Her aunt had lined up some part time work for her. We were devastated to discover soon after her arrival that her application for a British passport had been refused because we are in a de facto relationship. (Yes we should have read form more carefully but in 2 calls to PAssport Office to clarify about de facto we were told there would be no problem. Another follow up call and the employee had to ask a supervisor what de facto meant!) we have since located the UKF form and are about to lodge application. My questions are:

1. Home Office told us 3 to 6 months for a response - is that your experience?
2. Would applying for settlement in UK be a quicker option? (To allow her to work sooner.?) website shows a same day processing option - has anyone had any experience with this?
3. Any advice gratefully received as to how we get quickly establish our daughter to work legally in the UK.


cheers, Suzie

[Antsmall]

I completed my biometrics yesterday in the Vancouver VFS Global facility, whose address is:

Oceanic Plaza,
1066 West Hastings Street, Suite 2000
Vancouver, BC, V6E 3X2 Canada

(Yes, I know: Hastings, 1066. Ha ha. I suppose it makes the address easier to remember).

Suite 2000 is on the 20th floor. Leave any mobiles and other electronic devices in your hotel (or wherever they are safe if you have a location available) because they'll be taken away for the duration of the appointment. Leave any husbands or other human companions on the ground floor too (or take them up and then have the VFS people send them back down - the ground floor has sofas where they can wait).

The Canadian VFS office's email address, in case people can't manage to book an appointment online due to their website's temperamental nature, is UKVI.Feedback.Ca@vfshelpline.com. They are quite swift, surprisingly enough given the long waiting times involved in all other aspects of this process.

The appointment itself, as also reported by other people who recently had their biometrics taken in Vancouver, was very brief. The longest part was the waiting: I arrived about a quarter of an hour early to be on the safe side. I was back in the hotel a quarter of an hour after the stated appointment time.

Apparently parking is a nightmare in that area, and if driving one would probably fare better (this is what another applicant has told me) parking in a structure than attempting to find street parking.

However, it is better, if at all possible, to avoid arriving by car at all. We flew to Vancouver and stayed at the Days Inn, which is on 921 W Pender Street, just a few steps away from the Oceanic Plaza building which contains VFS. It was clean and pleasant and not overly expensive (I think it was around 65 dollars a night).

Public transport is reliable as far as I can see: you can purchase a Compass card (it's like Suica, Clipper card, Oyster card, Octopus card, Kitaca etc), ping it at the little machines at the entrance of buses or light rail stations (remembering to ping out at the exit of rail stations too - but not while exiting buses), and then reload it easily whenever necessary, using one of the many Compass terminals which are placed in stations etc, rather than fiddling about with individual tickets each time. People in green waistcoats are available to supply information in the light rail stations and they are very helpful.

The airport has a light rail line called Canada Line http://thecanadaline.com/ which leads directly to the Waterfront station, which in turn is very close both to the Days Inn (which by the way is not paying me for this review: I wish) and the VFS office. One terminal of the Canada Line is the airport, and the other is the Waterfront station, so it's easy to reach the Waterfront station and then reach the airport on the way back without having to think too hard and count stops (just be sure to take the YVR airport line on the way to the airport because there's an evil twin version which goes to 'Richmond-Brighouse': the identity of the train will be stated very clearly on the signposts and by the robot voice which announces things). The trains and buses do announce all the stops anyway, unlike some less user-friendly public transport systems in the world.

I hope this information is useful for people having their biometric data collected in Vancouver. I also hope that now that I've done the biometric dance, the Home Office will approve my application PDQ, because, confound it, I've already waited a grotesque eight months just for this preliminary procedure!

[uk_applicant]

Morning guys

I have some great news - i have recieved my letter of approvel dated 16th January on friday 22nd january !

I initially sumbmited my application some time in november and did my biometrics sometimes in december.

In the letter of approval they said they would write back within 2 weeks inviting me to a citzenship ceremony.

I have been watching this forum ever since september - i just hope all you guys get it

by the way my ethinc background is jamacian and no MP was involved !

all the best guys !!!

[bright_star]

Morning guys

I have some great news - i have recieved my letter of approvel dated 16th January on friday 22nd january !

I initially sumbmited my application some time in november and did my biometrics sometimes in december.

In the letter of approval they said they would write back within 2 weeks inviting me to a citzenship ceremony.

I have been watching this forum ever since september - i just hope all you guys get it

by the way my ethinc background is jamacian and no MP was involved !

all the best guys !!!

uk_applicant,

Congrats!!!

ps. have you submitted your application from Jamaica or from UK?