Further Facism Update
Monday, March 21st, 2005 at 1203Ok, here’s the current update on our immigration tale of strife and woe…
Last week we contacted a lawyer in Leicester ( several, actually) to get advice about our appeal. Every single one of them mentioned the fact that it was strange Coley had been granted the right to appeal. You see if your work permit is still valid when they (They being the Home Office) reach a decision (Or just rubberstamp you with rejection without opening the envelope…) you do not have grounds for appeal. What this means is that if we’d hired the lawyer (For just shy of 1,500 UK pounds) and gone to appeal it was very likely we would have gotten to the hearing and been told “I am sorry, but you do not have legal grounds for appeal.”
Bosh splat. £1,500 down the pipes and no comeback. It seems they don’t often do no-win no-fee in these cases and I don’t wonder why.
Anyway, the course of action available to us now is to make a new application for leave to remain in the UK. This has to be done pretty sharpish as Coley’s VISA expires on Thursday but that’s OK as under UK Immigration law if you have an application for leave in progress then your existing visa is extended until a decision is made.
So what now? We send our life off in a special delivery jiffy bag tomorrow morning, it arrives on the 23rd. They then process the application as normal which will, knowing the facist tarts at Immigration, involve emptying our envelope into a return envelope without reading anything and stuffing in a default rejection letter with her name on. We get the rejection back and THEN take it to appeal if we can afford to. Ironically the legal aid is going to cost as much as the flights back to Australia if the appeal fails. Not good.
There is one major pitfall that presents itself and that lies with the efficiency of the Home Office. If they manage to process the application within 2 days, she will not have a legal right to appeal as her existing visa will have been valid at the time of refusal. If this happens then we’re sailing down shit creek in a barbed wire canoe with oars made from cheese. Given that the original application took over 2 months to process, we’re hoping we’ll be OK, but you can apparrently never udnerestimate the lengths that the callous bastards at the HO will go to in order to wreck someone’s life.
