This year has been hellish for sorting out immigration details. In April, I needed a VISA renewal. Then there was a passport renewal. Because my passport was expiring, my VISA only ran until the length of the passport. So now I need another new one for my new passport. As part of the renewal process, I’m not allowed to leave the US. (Well, I could, but I might not be allowed back in).

In other news: I’m warming to the idea that the internet be switched off whenever there are public holidays.

Not attending FUDCon Toronto. is a post from: codemonkey.org.uk

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1. Passport hassles. My current 10 year british passport was due to expire...

My options were..

1. Fly back to the UK, apply for new passport, wait weeks for them to get around to it. (Suboptimal due to the ‘being away from home for a long time’ thing).

2. Mail my passport to some facility in Washington, DC along with an extortionate fee, where it would be kept for ‘a few weeks’, and then returned to me along with a new passport. (This option just gave me the creeps for unexplained reasons).
3. Fly back to the UK, and do a ‘same day’ visit to the passport office in London, and pay extortionate fees. (This is the option I ended up taking).

So the same day passport thing.. First you need to make an appointment. If you’re living outside the UK, this is the first hurdle you fall at. Someone in their wisdom decided to make this a free number that can’t be called from overseas. Thanks to an intermediary, several round-trips, I got an appointment made. Well, sort of. You can’t make an appointment more than 2 weeks ahead of time, and I had a specific set of dates in mind, to coincide with a trip back to the UK for other reasons. So my intermediary called back 2 weeks ahead of time, and was told to pass on a list of things I would need to bring.

• A reference number.

• An invitation letter
• 2 bills as proof of my address in the US
• A letter from my intermediary saying that I was staying with him while I was in the UK
• 2 of his bills to prove he lives at that address.
• A filled out web form available at http blahblahblah

All straight forward enough I guess. I hit up the web form. “If you are traveling in the next 4 weeks, don’t use this form, go see the British consulate”. Sigh.

So I made my way to the British consulate in Boston. Only to find they’d already closed for the day. At 12.30. Turns out they’re only open for 3 hours each day. So after the weekend, I went back again, earlier this time. I enter the building, and the place is deserted. There’s no receptionist. Or any means to indicate “HEY THERE’S SOMEONE HERE WHO WANTS TO SEE SOMEONE”. So you pace around waiting, hoping that someone will eventually come out of one of the locked doors. 20 minutes pass, and someone finally appears. I explain my predicament, and I get a blank look that just tells me how the rest of the conversation is going to go.
“We don’t do anything with passports. We can’t help you” was the short version. I left there with the helpful advice of “just turn up at the interview and explain”. Having experienced dealing with such institutions when I lived in the UK, I wasn’t particularly hopeful with this strategy.

So I arrived in London a day early, and hit up a post office, on the off-chance I could get a form from them, and it would be the right form for my situation. (Short answer: It was). The next day I make my way to the passport office. I arrive a good 30 minutes early just in case. Only to find that they won’t even let you into the building more than 10 minutes before your appointment. So I waited outside. (Tip for anyone who stumbles across this who might also want to get a new passport: Get an afternoon appointment, there’s a pub across the road, which will at least make the waiting more bearable. There’s not a great deal else to do nearby).

Once I’d been let in, I went through an xray scanner, and then saw someone at a desk to get issued a number to wait for. The conversation went something like this ..

“Appointment letter”
“I didn’t get sent one. But it’s ok, I have the reference number”
“But you need a letter”
“Yes, but you didn’t send me one”
“Without a letter, you can’t see anyone”
“But the letter won’t tell you anything other than my reference number”
(variations on the above until finally he reluctantly agreed to take my reference number)
“ok, my number is 4, 8, 7, ..”
“whoa, whoa, it’s supposed to be 4, 8, 9, ..”
“well it isn’t, and this is the number I was told”
“But it’s supposed to have a 9 in it”
“Well, mine doesn’t. It’s 4, 8, 7, …”
“it’s not going to work without a 9 in it, it’s the wrong number”
“well try it anyway”
“It won’t work”
“Please, try it.”
“*sigh*”
“4, 8, 7, …”
(My name appears on the screen as if by magic)

Once I had my magic ticket, I waited upstairs for a few minutes before being called, where I was interviewed by someone who never asked for any of the bills or other paperwork that was requested. Instead, she was more concerned with knowing “what do I have to do to live in america?”. She then spent a while staring at my photographs for my new passport, looking at me, squinting at the photographs, looking at me, and coming up with lines like “I don’t think the background is white enough” “your eyes don’t look right” “how long ago were these photographs taken?” “I think the computer is going to reject them”. She seemed to be pushing to try and get me to use their photo booth to go take more photographs, without even having tried the ones I submitted. “try them anyway. if they don’t work, THEN I’ll get new photographs” “*sigh*”.

I made a point about them not slicing through the visa pages on my old passport. They showed complete indifference, which made me worried. At no point was I asked for the bills, or proof of address documentation.

I paid my extortionate fee, and was told to come back in four hours. After getting some lunch, and wandering around for a few hours, I returned, and my old passport still had its visa intact and I had a new passport waiting for collection, complete with biometric bullshit.
They had a machine that you can use to scan the rfid chip with. It has this blurb about how it doesn’t contain anything other than what the computer shows you. Just how trusting do they expect people to be? (Or maybe I’m overly cynical).

Passport hassles. is a post from: codemonkey.org.uk

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