osakamackem

Hi all,

We've an interesting case, which I thought I'd share, for information and comments.

My wife and I have applied for her visa from Osaka, Japan. We weren't sure about the process for some time (i.e. whether documents were sent to Sheffield or Manila, and whether they were to be sent by us, or VFS Osaka). There's some discussion of those queries here, for those interested:

http://britishexpats.com/forum/citiz...ffield-907090/

http://britishexpats.com/forum/citiz...ervice-907579/

We eventually sent our documents directly to Sheffield (22 Jan), which were returned to us (26 Jan) and we received email confirmation on 2 Feb.

Today, my wife received an email from 'Manila Deferrals', stating that we had five working days to submit an additional document. This was a statement from UK NARIC that her US Bachelor Degree was equal to a UK Bachelor degree.

Of course, we had submitted that in our original submission (both original copy, and a photocopy, both of which we returned among all of our other documents).

Now, this raises some cause for concern, confusion and anger.

The main concern is that, if the document from UK NARIC, which we have now resent, is not sufficient (for whatever reason) it is unlikely that UK NARIC can issue a different statement to us within five working days.

The confusion is regarding why Manila is processing our application, when we had to send everything to Sheffield. Such an extra step obviously allows for mistakes to be made in the decision-making process. Alternatively, if this has been passed to Manila because they thought something was missing, then how can Sheffield be so careless as to miss the document??

Either way, the anger is with the apparent carelessness with which our application has been handled, when we are expected to take a lot of care, and are given little room for error.

Just thought I'd share. Additionally, any comments or information which can help us understand what might've happened here would be very much appreciated.

BritInParis

Manila is the regional UK visa processing hub for Asia and Oceania. Settlement visas used to be processed there before being transferred to Sheffield. They were passed back briefly after Sheffield was overwhelmed. Processing appears to have been passed back to Sheffield now but the visa should be physically inserted into your passport in Manila.

osakamackem

Thanks BritInParis.

You explained in an earlier thread about this back and forth between Manila and Sheffield as the processing site, which was very helpful background information for us.

If Sheffield is now the processing site for the application documents (and I assume they are, since we were asked to send our documents there), I'm not sure why manila is emailing us to tell us some document is missing (even though it wasn't), unless they are also involved - to some extent - the the processing.

I've emailed Manila Deferrals, and if their response sheds any light on this, I'll provide an update here.

osakamackem

UPDATE, for those interested:

Manila didn't reply to our email, nor to my second email chasing up a response. However, the visa was issued on 23 Feb (four working days after our response email to Manila).