Outsourced Government

Six weeks ago, D. received notice that he’d passed his Master’s degree. This was our cue to go into action and get our visas updated for his PhD studies, as our original visas expire at the end of December. Unfortunately for us, the Home Office takes from eight to ten weeks to process a visa. So, we would have to either pay £1,000 ($1,500 USD) to get our visas expedited in Glasgow, or we could get our visas done at home over Christmas. Since we’d already planned to return for Christmas and didn’t want to spend the £1,000, we planned to get our visas renewed at home.

Last year, getting visas amounted to simply going down to Los Angeles with all of our paperwork, passing through some metal detectors and whatnot, and returning later in the day to pick up our freshly adorned passports. This year … this year, it’s all been outsourced.

To get a visa for the UK, one now has to register with WorldBridge. This is not a part of the UK Government, but a company of some sort. After you have registered – and paid for – your visa, you make an appointment to have your biometric information taken. The soonest possible appointment was for today, 23-December. In order to have your biometrics taken, you must present your passport. After your biometrics have been taken, you are expected to mail all of your documents to the UK Consulate General in Los Angeles. After opening your documents (which may take up to three days), it takes between five and ten working days for them to process your visa application. After then, they return your documents via UPS.

What does this mean for us? It means that the following documents are now in a FedEx envelope, on their way to Los Angeles: passports, birth certificates, marriage license, bank records, the lease to our flat in Glasgow, D’s university diplomas and transcripts, university acceptance letter, a statement from the university that he has registered and is in good standing, a letter from the finance office that he is in financially good standing, a certificate stating that he has passed a background check from the Academic Technology Approval Scheme, receipts from the biometric ID office, and the visa applications themselves (with receipt for payment of $190 each).

The envelope should arrive next Monday (the Consulate being closed until then). IF they open it immediately, they will have nine business days in which to process the application and return it to us. We travel the weekend after their nine business days.

We are, of course, quite concerned about this. We were concerned about this before we left, and have emailed and telephoned, to no avail. All roads, it seems, lead to the WorldBridge people, who have no way of contacting the Consulate in the US, and will happily tell you this for $3.00 per minute or a $12.00 flat fee (we opted for the flat fee, knowing that we’d spend more than 4 minutes on the phone). When we finally got hold of someone before we left (from WorldBridge, via email) we were told that the people in Oakland would be able to help us. The people in Oakland were very sympathetic, but could do nothing whatsoever, and were hired by WorldBridge. They have no contact with the consulate whatsoever, except to send them our biometric data.

It seems that we are left simply to pray, and to be thankful that we should never have to go through this process again, as the visas should be good for four years. Provided they show up.

– D & T

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