{"id":5575,"date":"2016-03-01T21:11:48","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T20:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/unkategorisiert\/a-serb-entering-the-uk-mission-impossible\/?lang=de"},"modified":"2016-04-29T18:13:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T16:13:57","slug":"a-serb-entering-the-uk-mission-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/2016\/03\/a-serb-entering-the-uk-mission-impossible\/","title":{"rendered":"A Serb Entering the UK: Mission (Im)possible!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Andrea
Andrea Karan<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Andrea Karan<\/h2>\n

I come from a non-EU member, but an EU candidate country, Serbia. Serbian citizens are allowed to stay in EU countries up to 90 days without a visa. However, the\u00a0 UK and Ireland require visas. A couple of months ago I got an invitation from \u2019United Europe\u2019 to attend a seminar in London. This meant two days of seminar with young professionals discussing hot political topics + two days of an express-touristic visit. What good reasons to finally visit London!<\/p>\n

January<\/h2>\n

Firstly, I needed to apply online<\/strong> for my visa. My, oh my! How many questions! The British website had far more questions<\/strong> than any other Visa application form I had ever filled. Some of them were very bizarre like:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • \u2018How long have you lived at this address<\/em>?\u2019-to express in years and months (!). I could just about remember the year, but the month? I had to search for the contract which is more than 15 years old. Anyway, is this really important?<\/li>\n
  • Have you ever traveled outside your country of residence in the last 10 years<\/em>? List the countries, the dates and the reason why. Luckily, there was only enough space to list ten trips. I chose the ones which had a readable stamp in my passport.<\/li>\n
  • Then a question about my parents: when they were born, <\/em>but no question about the country where they were born.<\/em><\/li>\n
  • How much do I spend each month on living costs<\/em>? Well, quite a personal question. Also, do I have savings in shares and stocks<\/em>, and\u00a0the cost of my living expense during the trip.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    I thought I would never finish the application. Anyway, I submitted. The next step was to book an appointment and, within next three hours, to pay the hefty fee of 85 GBP<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

    It was then that the problems started. I chose the option to pay via Paypal. The system blocked my 85 GBP, but the transaction was not successful<\/strong>. Consequently, the appointment was cancelled after three hours.<\/p>\n

    I contacted the Support team<\/strong> and wrote them an e-mail (I couldn\u2019t do it by phone – that was another issue) and I could use only up to 500 characters. (M: me, T: them)<\/p>\n

    T: Please try again to book the appointment and to pay.<\/p>\n

    M: Can you please first release the blocked funds and I will restart the process? I have the proof that you received my money. Please accept it or abort the process.<\/p>\n

    T: Check the Internet browser and accept the cookies.<\/p>\n

    M: Everything is fine with that. Please abort the payment process and de-block my 85 GBP. I\u2019ll try to repay afterwards.<\/p>\n

    T: Please, check the card with your card issuer.<\/p>\n

    M: Which card-issuer? I didn\u2019t pay by card! Are you reading my e-mails? Please solve my problem.<\/p>\n

    T: \u2026Check again your browser\u2026 accept the cookies\u2026 check with your card-issuer\u2026restart the whole process.<\/p>\n

    Is this real? <\/strong>Apparently yes. Ten days passed, and I was given the same responses over and over again. I wrote an email to the UK Embassy in Belgrade to complain. No answer.<\/p>\n

    February<\/h2>\n

    I decided to create a new application, spent another three hours on all those detailed questions, booked the appointment, paid again, and guess what – another 85 GBP were blocked and the transaction failed again! I now have 170 GBP blocked… Are they ignoring my problem on purpose?<\/strong> How can anybody apply for a visa if the server is not working?<\/strong> Are they doing this on purpose to keep people from coming to the UK?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Finally, a friend in the EU paid for my visa through her own credit card. How nice! The next working day I had my appointment at the Visa & Immigration office in Belgrade. I brought all the documents and told the agent about the problems I had had. She didn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

    The agent also said that I would get the answer about my Visa within 15 working days. Three weeks? That would be just two days before the seminar was supposed to start! I told her how long I had been trying to apply and failed because of a bug in their software. She answered that if I was in such a hurry, I could pay an extra 150 GBP for express treatment\u2026<\/p>\n

    Did I feel like a target <\/strong>of a Western government\u2019s populist anti-immigration campaign? Are there some political reasons behind the story?<\/strong> I don\u2019t know. I would love to think that it was a technical issue and that they simply happen to have a horrible customer support.<\/p>\n

    Countries have their own rules on how to enter them. But do they really have to humiliate people that way?<\/p>\n

    P.S. The visa finally did get approved! And in good time for my trip and the seminar. Hooray!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    By Andrea Karan I come from a non-EU member, but an EU candidate country, Serbia. Serbian citizens are allowed to stay in EU countries up to 90 days without a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[585,681],"tags":[603,605,652,523,653],"powerkit_post_featured":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ue-advocacy-programm","7":"category-advocacy-voices-de","8":"tag-borders-de","9":"tag-migration-de","10":"tag-serbia-de","11":"tag-uk-de","12":"tag-visa-de"},"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5937,"href":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5575\/revisions\/5937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5575"},{"taxonomy":"powerkit_post_featured","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.united-europe.eu\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/powerkit_post_featured?post=5575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}