Police Certificates Request from London - Request for Help!
Jun 6th 2011, 9:50 pm
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Police Certificates Request from London - Request for Help!
I wonder if anyone can help us with Police Certificates. I apologize in advance for the long posting. This is a bit complicated involving 4 different countries' certificates.
CONTEXT:
I am sponsoring my husband to become a permanent resident of Canada. I have been a permanent resident since 2003 and my sponsorship was approved. We are processing the application in London as my partner was there until just two weeks' ago when he moved here to Newfoundland to join me after our wedding on 7 May in the UK. I have been in Newfoundland for nearly one year. He has a 3 year work permit for Newfoundland.
REQUEST FROM LONDON FOR FURTHER DOCUMENTS:
We have just received an email from London asking him to get a new passport because he does not have a space between his first and middle names on his current passport. He has had it for 9 years and travelled on it extensively and never noticed nor had this pointed out to him. It is a shame as we have to apply via the Regional Passport Office in Washington, DC and pay a lot more than we would have if he was still in the UK but this is just bad luck. This we can manage as we are told this will take 4 weeks (though they are experiencing delays at the moment) and we have 60 days to respond.
From 1999-2002, my husband travelled around Europe. He had months with no fixed address and worked several casual contracts as an ESL teacher. He has no documentation of this period whatsoever - no contracts or diaries or anything. He doesn't even have his passport for this period with some stamps in it to help us with dates as he replaced his passport in 2002 and got rid of his old one. And his memory is terrible for timings! So on his Schedule 1, he basically had to guess. They have now asked us for Police Certificates for Poland, France, Spain and the Netherlands.
FRENCH POLICE CERTIFICATE
France is fine - we've submitted online and are waiting and hoping!
POLISH POLICE CERTIFICATE
Poland is more complicated. We are applying from Canada but, due to the threatened postal strike and being out here on Newfoundland island where mail takes another 5 days or so to get to compared to the mainland, we want to have the police clearance certificate mailed back to his parents' address in England for them to get it to the London Embassy more quickly. Timing is an issue as this certificate takes up to 2 months and we have 60 days to respond to London. I've seen a posting about this on this forum which referred me to the page on the Polish Embassy website in Vancouver indicating fees due of $95 plus a postage fee. The Polish Embassy website in London says 65 UK pounds. We were going to pay the fee in UK pounds because we are having the certificate mailed to the UK afterwards. However, when I emailed the Polish Embassy in the UK asking whether we could pay by personal check (their website simply says 'check' not whether it has to be a certified check) they said they only dealt with Polish citizens in the UK wanting police certificates not with UK citizens wanting a police certificate from Poland. Help! Any advice? Can we pay in Canadian dollars and still get the certificate mailed to the UK to save us the precious (maybe crucial if our postal strike continues!) time? Has anyone out there applied for a Polish Police Certificate by mail from the UK and, if so, what fee did you pay and how?
SPANISH POLICE CERTIFICATE
Spain just changed their procedures in April 2011. The British Consul will no longer facilitate getting Spanish police certificates for British citizens. Has anyone gone through the new system? One website says you have to go to your local Spanish embassy with your original documents to have them verified. For us, that is a 10 hour drive each way right across Newfoundland! Is there some way to get these from Spain now without going to an embassy?
DUTCH POLICE CERTIFICATE
The Netherlands also has us completely stumped. They only have instructions for how to get them in person or via a representative in the country. We know no one in the Netherlands. Can you hire a representative in country to go for you? Is it possible to get a Netherlands Police Certificate mailed to you from overseas without going in person or sending a representative?
REQUEST FOR ADVICE ABOUT STRATEGY
Finally, does anyone have any advice about how to deal with undocumented periods like this one in my husband's life? He is sure he was not in the Netherlands, France or Spain for 6 continuous months but we cannot prove it. We think he may have been a bit of a plonker (his admission!!) and put that he was in each of these countries for 6 months thinking that 6 months or less would not require a Police Certificate but it is 6 months or more that DOES require Police Certificates. Is it worth trying to explain this or will the fact that he is vague and not able to verify his dates only get us in more trouble? Surely, officials realize that periods of travel from over a decade ago may not be verifiable in detail by applicants now...? Any advice from people in similar positions will be most welcome.
ANY EXPERIENCE OF OUTCOMES IN THIS SITUATION?
And also, if we simply are unable to get these Police Certificates, will that result in an automatic rejection of the application? Or is it possible that his application may still be processed and passed? Has anyone any experience of this? We are worried that we may simply be unable to get the Police Certificates from the Netherlands and Spain from here on the west coast of Newfoundland miles and miles from any embassy! The irony is that after this period of travel he was sworn in as a Police Officer in the UK in 2002 and has served since then. Hardly the career path of a hardened continental criminal!
CONTEXT:
I am sponsoring my husband to become a permanent resident of Canada. I have been a permanent resident since 2003 and my sponsorship was approved. We are processing the application in London as my partner was there until just two weeks' ago when he moved here to Newfoundland to join me after our wedding on 7 May in the UK. I have been in Newfoundland for nearly one year. He has a 3 year work permit for Newfoundland.
REQUEST FROM LONDON FOR FURTHER DOCUMENTS:
We have just received an email from London asking him to get a new passport because he does not have a space between his first and middle names on his current passport. He has had it for 9 years and travelled on it extensively and never noticed nor had this pointed out to him. It is a shame as we have to apply via the Regional Passport Office in Washington, DC and pay a lot more than we would have if he was still in the UK but this is just bad luck. This we can manage as we are told this will take 4 weeks (though they are experiencing delays at the moment) and we have 60 days to respond.
From 1999-2002, my husband travelled around Europe. He had months with no fixed address and worked several casual contracts as an ESL teacher. He has no documentation of this period whatsoever - no contracts or diaries or anything. He doesn't even have his passport for this period with some stamps in it to help us with dates as he replaced his passport in 2002 and got rid of his old one. And his memory is terrible for timings! So on his Schedule 1, he basically had to guess. They have now asked us for Police Certificates for Poland, France, Spain and the Netherlands.
FRENCH POLICE CERTIFICATE
France is fine - we've submitted online and are waiting and hoping!
POLISH POLICE CERTIFICATE
Poland is more complicated. We are applying from Canada but, due to the threatened postal strike and being out here on Newfoundland island where mail takes another 5 days or so to get to compared to the mainland, we want to have the police clearance certificate mailed back to his parents' address in England for them to get it to the London Embassy more quickly. Timing is an issue as this certificate takes up to 2 months and we have 60 days to respond to London. I've seen a posting about this on this forum which referred me to the page on the Polish Embassy website in Vancouver indicating fees due of $95 plus a postage fee. The Polish Embassy website in London says 65 UK pounds. We were going to pay the fee in UK pounds because we are having the certificate mailed to the UK afterwards. However, when I emailed the Polish Embassy in the UK asking whether we could pay by personal check (their website simply says 'check' not whether it has to be a certified check) they said they only dealt with Polish citizens in the UK wanting police certificates not with UK citizens wanting a police certificate from Poland. Help! Any advice? Can we pay in Canadian dollars and still get the certificate mailed to the UK to save us the precious (maybe crucial if our postal strike continues!) time? Has anyone out there applied for a Polish Police Certificate by mail from the UK and, if so, what fee did you pay and how?
SPANISH POLICE CERTIFICATE
Spain just changed their procedures in April 2011. The British Consul will no longer facilitate getting Spanish police certificates for British citizens. Has anyone gone through the new system? One website says you have to go to your local Spanish embassy with your original documents to have them verified. For us, that is a 10 hour drive each way right across Newfoundland! Is there some way to get these from Spain now without going to an embassy?
DUTCH POLICE CERTIFICATE
The Netherlands also has us completely stumped. They only have instructions for how to get them in person or via a representative in the country. We know no one in the Netherlands. Can you hire a representative in country to go for you? Is it possible to get a Netherlands Police Certificate mailed to you from overseas without going in person or sending a representative?
REQUEST FOR ADVICE ABOUT STRATEGY
Finally, does anyone have any advice about how to deal with undocumented periods like this one in my husband's life? He is sure he was not in the Netherlands, France or Spain for 6 continuous months but we cannot prove it. We think he may have been a bit of a plonker (his admission!!) and put that he was in each of these countries for 6 months thinking that 6 months or less would not require a Police Certificate but it is 6 months or more that DOES require Police Certificates. Is it worth trying to explain this or will the fact that he is vague and not able to verify his dates only get us in more trouble? Surely, officials realize that periods of travel from over a decade ago may not be verifiable in detail by applicants now...? Any advice from people in similar positions will be most welcome.
ANY EXPERIENCE OF OUTCOMES IN THIS SITUATION?
And also, if we simply are unable to get these Police Certificates, will that result in an automatic rejection of the application? Or is it possible that his application may still be processed and passed? Has anyone any experience of this? We are worried that we may simply be unable to get the Police Certificates from the Netherlands and Spain from here on the west coast of Newfoundland miles and miles from any embassy! The irony is that after this period of travel he was sworn in as a Police Officer in the UK in 2002 and has served since then. Hardly the career path of a hardened continental criminal!
