alt Hacker NewsI had no idea travel was this difficult for people who aren't EU citizens.
Wow, I'm almost annoyed on the authors behalf of how much hoops there are to jump through.
>To apply for British citizenship, you need to prove you were physically in the UK on your application date but five years ago. Not approximately five years, not that week—that exact day when you press "submit" on the form minus five years. Miss it by 24 hours and your application is reject after months of waiting, and you have to pay a hefty fee to re-apply.
That's a hilarious requirement. I wonder how that ended up in there.
Replies
As someone that is about 50, we also had it this way in Europe.
Newer generations don't get how lucky they are to have been born into EU, appreciate it while it lasts.
>I had no idea travel was this difficult for people who aren't EU citizens.
Most people can't afford to travel to the Schengen Area for more than the visa-free limit of 90 days within a 180 day period.
Those that can are "digital nomads" and are almost certainly working illegally while travelling.
> I called the app Residency and you can get it here. No subscriptions, costs less than an airport martini, and you'll likely regret it less a few hours later.
The article is content marketing, so I wouldn't be surprised if the pain points are being talked up somewhat (but who knows?)
Guessing it stems from "we need something dead-simple to evaluate that yields a definite yes-or-no answer, with no annoying variables."
I'm trying to think of some other reason they might want a specific moment rather than "pick your own instant within this span", but I can't think of anything. Even if it was to "make sure you aren't claiming the same time on two applications to different places", the person could have simply staggered the applications.
My guess is that if you need to have been there for 5y, you need to have a way to tell when that 5y starts. I presume it only matters if you apply the day after 5y. When I applied I had been in the UK for over 10y, provided 10y worth of proof of address, and the issue never came up.
It's not even hard really, I did it lastyear. I book a visit to the city hall, they look into the address db and see when I registered the first time. I see exactlt the same thing myself when I login into the thing.
The official agrees with me on the appointment date to actually submit the application, that is after cutoff date.
I put a signature on one sheet of paper, pay a thousand and go my way. The thing takes 15 min tops.
But it's continental Europe, not UK
It depends on where you're going and what you're doing.
A lot of this faff isn't relevant if you're not applying for any visas or citizenship. Which is most people, most of the time.
The obvious solution to most of these problems for most people is "don't cut it close to any of the limits". If you enjoy traveling a lot, that's definitely a problem, but most people don't cross borders often enough to run into this many corner cases.
This is only a small peek into the awful bureaucracy that will hit Europe if extreme right wing parties keep gaining popularity across the EU. The extra calculations Brexit imposes, but not for every country you travel through!
The point is not to produce a system where a software engineer can loophole the system. The point is to try to prevent people who aren't committed to the UK apply for citizenship.
> To apply for British citizenship, you need to prove you were physically in the UK on your application date but five years ago.
I am confused whats British citizenship application to do with his, or any travel at all? That's not what you do regularly, I mean most people do not apply for citizenship in other countries ever in their lives? Or am I missing something?
> I had no idea travel was this difficult for people who aren't EU citizens.
I traveled before and I traveled after Schengen and the only thing that changed was not having to wait a bit at border control. What the article describe concerns a very small number of people, and exist only because of cheap air travel and internet
Do you think applying on February 29 is allowed?
Note also that this isn't a travel requirement.
It’s just as difficult for EU citizens when traveling to most of the world.
I'll tell you a secret, UK gov has no clue where you were 5 years ago :-)
Right now the biggest problem in life is the country of my passport.
I have enough in savings and enough passive income to be able to live comfortably almost anywhere, but whenever I talk to travel agents, or people who can help set up companies etc in the countries I want to go to, first they're like "Sure, we can do it, when do you want it" etc and then they ask where I'm from, and when I tell them, they either stop replying or say sorry, they can't help me.
sigh...Racism is a funny thing. They haven't even seen me, or seen my history of travel, or anything, they just stop cooperating when they see that one word, the name of my country.
And I can't blame them either, I know many people from here go and overstay there visas and generally make problems in other countries.
I just wish I could put down a deposit of a few thousand dollars as a guarantee that I'll behave and get a visa.
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First, the author is actually wrong. The date is not 5 years before you submit, but is 5 years before the form is received by the home office! So there are a few days of uncertainty, depending on how fast Royal Mail was with the physical documents.
Additionally, I did a request for my information from the home office prior to filling in my form. After all, you have the right to request the information they have on you that will be used to verify your form. Kafka would be proud.
Let me tell you, Home Office doesn't have a clue where you were 5 years ago. It had approximately 50% of my trips, and frequently only had only one leg of the journey. Plane, ferry, train, sailboat, ... it didn't matter. It seems like they have not been keeping the information very well.