R.I.Pienaar

Today my UK passport finally arrived, I did have to go for an interview where they re-established that I am who I say I am.

The interview was quite interesting, when I went to write my Britishness Test there were only 4 or so other people at the test and I kind of looked at that as an indication that perhaps, as usual, there is more hype in the media related to immigration than is really needed.

They arrange the interview meetings in blocks of 45 minutes and only allow you in 10 minutes before your block start, so you can know who is in there are all people who are applying for their first passport.  I went to the interview center in Elephant & Castle, its a fairly big facility with almost 30 interview cubicles, in my 45 minutes block there were about 80 or so people waiting for the interview.

This kind of brought it home a bit more that yes really there is a massive immigration problem, the interview centers are open 6 days a week and if they are usually anywhere near as busy as when I went – noon on a Friday – then I’d say the rate of immigration is totally unsustainable.  It is easier to visualize the problem in a setting like this than to read some big figure in a news paper.

The interview itself was very professionally done, the woman who interviewed me were friendly, thorough and I think the whole thing was actually pretty enjoyable apart from the obvious inconvenience involved.  They mostly asked me to confirm what I already filled in on my application forms but also some extra things like what is my Car Registration, what bank accounts I have and when they were opened.  It was all simple stuff and went really quick.

I previously mentioned that got a letter confirming it all went well with my application for naturalisation, the whole process is now more or less done.

I had the ceremony last Thursday and around 11:24 in the morning the Mayor of Greenwich handed me my certificate so I am now all done with that and a full Citizen of the United Kingdom.  I arrived here on the 2nd of Feb 2002 and became a citizen on the 7th of Feb 2008.  I could have applied last year in March already and probably would have been done with it all around September but I was procrastinating and eventually the noise about the reforms in the immigration laws gave me the kick I needed to complete it. 

The biggest advantage I’ll see immediately is of course the passport, traveling as a South African – or in fact being a South African out of South Africa – is such a liability your whole life is just tough, massive headache of visas, immigration time wasting etcetc, endless hassle.  In tourist visas alone I spent about GBP500 in the last few years never mind all the time wasted in getting those and even just in queuing in the non EU citizen lines at airports, all gone now!  I’ve also had to struggle quite a lot with tenancy agreements for flats that I rent etc as I was never sure if I’ll even be in the country for the year they want you to sign, so had to always get 6 month break clauses put in etc.

This is a part of the certificate I received during the ceremony:

Today I’ll apply for my first UK passport, it should come through in about 2 weeks unfortunately just too late to attend FOSDEM.

The process for applying for citizenship is all hyped up to be this fantastic experience for applicants, a great introduction to the country and its people.  This is done through the test you need to pass and a formal ceremony that even includes singing God Save The Queen. 

Overall I’d say the whole thing just left me cold, personally I see little point to most of the hoops I had to jump through.  I have to say though that the test has some value – it tests that you have a grasp of English and in that function its a success so I’d keep it for that reason.  The ceremonies though? waste of time and money in my eye.

I just received the following in the post:

Thanks you for submitting your application for British citizenship.  I am pleased to say that the application has been succesful and you will shortly receive a letter inviting you to attend a citizenship ceremony.

Hooray.