This past week was very frustrating, but it may be getting resolved soon.
For those who may not know, Great Britain changed its immigration laws regarding student visas and spouses. In effect, Maria and I both had to apply by July 4 -- me as a student, she as my dependent -- or she would not have been able to accompany me unless she somehow got a work permit prior to September 9 -- unlikely given the economic situation in England at present.
So, this week was a blur of activity as we secured a CAS (Confirmation of Acceptance of Studies) number from Brunel and applied for our visas on line Saturday.
The UK wanted to know about my two speeding tickets, so that was exciting as we tried to figure out how to get those records on a holiday weekend. Thanks to our fabulous and ingenious daughteer-in-law Aimee, who is even now keeping us safe at Homeland Security. we found the records and finished off both applications, paying almost $900.00 for the privilege of staying in England 27 days longer than we could have stayed on a regular passport (6-month maximum stay).
Next up is finance. I have been approved for student loans direct and indirect in an amount actually sufficient to live on in London for 7 months, but my loan amount is evidently subject to the Britsh Council guidelines for students, and Brunel's finance office may be bound by these guidelines, which do not allow us sufficient funds to find a place and eat while we're there. I simply do not understand how a college in the UK can tell a private loan foundation how much they can lend me for school. Are they going to pay the loan back? They acknowledge the guidelines are totally unrealistic, but their hands may be tied. I even called Sallie Mae to ask them -- they said they were bound by what Brunel told them.
Amazing. We'll work this out in the coming weeks, I think. In the meantime, we will be looking forward to handing over our biometric data in Durham on Monday, July 25th at 11:00 AM. I need to look up what biometric data is, and then I'll decide whether I should be frightened or not...!
In the meantime, we're packing up our first package of stuff to ship to ourselves in late August. We'll have more later. Thanks for reading!
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