ILR on a Ancestral visa

[Siggi]

I managed to book my appointment for the 25th Jan 08 at Lunar House Crydon.This was done telephonically on the 27th Dec 07.

The experience was quite pleasant, arriving at 8:45 and moving quickly through the 1st floor document checks and proceeding to the second floor to make that heavy payment of £950.

9:30 I was called to my interveiw, all my documents where checked again and by 9:45 the BIA officer told me that my wife and I have now been granted ILR and will need to wait 90 mins for our passports to be stamped and returned.

I left the building for coffee and breakfast and returned 70 min later, waited a further 10min to receive my passport -no problems at all-But you do pay for this service!.
I did not include our daughter who was born in the UK in 2004 in our ILR application.

For our daughter I had a appointment with the Nationality checking service, which I did on Monday, again it took no longer than 45 min, they made copies of all the documents, charge me £10 for the service and £400 for the registration fee. Again a pleasant experience.

Document present for ILR:

My 1st passport with my AV and UK entery date stamp
My 2nd passport with the AV extention
Three months of pay slips no bank statement, which I had just incase.
Letter from my employer
Birth Cert: Grand Father & Mother ect
List of in & out dates totaling 180days of five years.

Daughters registration documents: (MN1) form

My 2 passports, my wifes and daughter passports
Marriage Cert
Daughter UK Birth Cert
List of in & out dates for myself wife and daughter

[Dawie]

Congratulations, £950 well spent if you ask me! I don't understand why some people are willing to endure weeks and even months of uncertainty with ILR postal applications, plus the very real risk of your documents being lost in the post, just to save a few bucks!

[John]

I suspect the answer is that it saves :-

• £200, and
• taking a day off work, and
• the bother and expense of having to travel to the PEO, rather than the local Post Office

[Siggi]

Well guess that you are both right.
But consider the problems of losing your passport in the post.

Fistly, you would have to prove to your own country that you are who you are and hoping that they who grant you a new passport, which in Africa could take 6 months and more.

Right so now you have received your brand new passport, your next fight would be with the BIA ask to prove your visa status and your peroid of stay,so more arguements and money for the replace visa ect.

In between all this you would lose time towards ILR and Naturalisation not to mention the stress

No I will not risk all that for one days leave and £200, but that me!

[John]

It is actually quite rare for anything sent Special Delivery to go missing in the post. And if, very exceptionally, it does go missing, you are effectively insured against the cost of applying for things like replacement passports.

A further point .... many types of applications must be posted ..... there is no choice ..... and I would hate anyone to have sleepless nights unnecessarily ... because an application must be posted.

[Dawie]

And if, very exceptionally, it does go missing, you are effectively insured against the cost of applying for things like replacement passports.

My point is that however small the risk of your passport going missing in the post, and however big the insurance policy may be, nothing can compensate you for the loss of your passport and the information it contains. It is for all intents and purposes uninsurable.

Special Delivery insurance will not compensate you for the day off work you have to take to queue up at your home embassy in order to apply for a replacement passport. It will not compensate you for the 6 months that you are stuck in the UK waiting for your passport to arrive unable to go on holiday. It will not compensate you for another day off work to queue up at the embassy to take delivery of your new passport. It will not compensate you for the replacement costs of your UK visa.