Big Brother & The Home Office

Simone O'Callaghan — Sat, 24 May 2008 19:14:22 +0000

I was born in Australia. When I was 6 months old we moved to the UK. My family enjoyed the best Britain could offer by spending much of the 1970's living in a socio-economically depressed part of Glasgow during a time now known as the "winter of discontent". My poor mother found this such a shock to her system that eventually the cold, the grey and the limited diet whittled away at her soul till she could stand it no longer. We moved back to Australia when I was 4. When we left I had an Australian passport, with a big “ UK Permanent Resident” stamped across it.

My mother has long since “put in a safe place” this precious passport, never to be found again. When I came back to the UK as an adult, according to all the advice, I was eligible for a “returning resident” visa. However the Home Office claimed not have a a record of me as a permanent resident and the only way to prove this was with the long gone passport. So it was the 1970’s we don’t expect that the databases would have been that advanced, and clearly in a country that has been keeping records since the Doomsday book the 1970’s must have just been a blip.

So, because my grandfather was British I applied for an ancestry visa. His 1908 birth certificate easier to get that my 1970’s permanent residency status. In 2003 after being here a long while and renewing my Australian passport, I needed to transfer the ancestry visa to the new passport. After seeking advice from the Home Office I was told instead of getting a transfer of the visa to my new passport, I was eligible for permanent residency (again!) and I should just apply for that in my new passport. So I did.

I needed the passport sorted in a hurry because I was presenting a paper at a conference in Vienna for Bournemouth University, so I forked out £500 for an interview in Croydon to get the same day service. This was one of the most degrading experiences I have ever had in Britain. I was made to wait in a very long queue outside what looked like a housing estate tower block (sans vomit stains on the ground) for half an hour in the sleet before finally I was allowed into the hallowed building.

The place where you get your visas etc is along hall with bank teller like windows down one of the long sides. You sit on uncomfortable plastic orange seats in rows opposite, under flickering fluorescent lights. You are given a number and eventually it gets called and you are sent to a teller to have an interview with someone behind bullet proof glass. You have no privacy – you are made to feel worthless, small and very much like a criminal.

To apply for permanent residency you need to prove you have been a hardworking, fine upstanding citizen of Britain for the past 5 consecutive years. I had all my payslips, employment contracts, rental agreements and banking details proving as much. I had a letter stating that my case was urgent because I was representing a British University and showcasing the British talent of my students at an international conference. I had both my old and new passports.

My interview lasted 5 hours and I was put through hell for a tiny tiny almost unnoticeable “inconsistency”. On one occasions that I returned to the UK, the passport official gave my passport a cursory glance, saw I had been here for a long time, and didn't’t stamp my passport.

According to the Home Office this meant there was no way of telling how long I had been out of the country, or whether I came back at all.
“But I am physically here now! Doesn’t that prove I came back?”
“No, you might have come back illegally”
“How could I? That is crazy, besides, there is another stamp showing I left a few weeks later to go for a 5 day trip to Paris and look there is an entry stamp saying I came back that time, after the first date in question” I showed them the two stamps.
“That doesn’t prove you came back”
“Yes it does, how can I leave the country if I am not here in the first place? Logic tells you I must have been here before that stamp leaving to go to Paris in order to get the stamp in the first place”
“We need the stamp to say you came back before then” He stated belligerently. I was beginning to think this guy was totally mad.
“ Surely you can swipe my passport like they do when I come into the country and see all the times I have been in and out. Look you have that swipey machine there!”
“That doesn’t tell us things like that”
“Goodness” I was getting very exasperated and wanted a more powerful expletive, but thought that would ruin all my chances “ I thought that’s what those systems were made for. What on earth does it tell you”?
“It just matches up your identity”
“So let me get this right, there is no database behind it tracking my movements?”
“No”

I demanded to see his supervisor who confirmed what he had told me, and after another 3 hours of interviewing, bullying, being reduced to tears and a resultant migraine, which killed any desire to bother with the whole process, I was finally awarded my UK permanent residency status for the second time.

Since then I have taken the “Life in the UK” test, know more useless facts about Britain than those born here and have become a citizen so I never have to go through that hell again.