BRITISH VISA REQUIREMENTS ARE OUT OF CONTROL
Goodbye London
23.06.2009This article comes as a general warning to those of you with South African passports wishing to travel to the US or Europe via the United Kingdom. I URGE you to use another hub of sorts, as the new requirements for a simple transit visa are EXACTLY the same as if you were applying for something far more dramatic.
I should mention that, due to SA Home Affairs not complying to required changes to SA passports (which they were warned about a few years back), UK’s Border control have put South African passports in the same category as Taiwanese, Jamaican, Bolivian, Venezuelan, Lesotho and Swaziland passports.
Awesome!
Due to changes in my schedule, I will be flying via London on my way home from Europe in July. And when I say “via” London, I mean LITERALLY landing at Gatwick, going straight to Heathrow and taking off again.
The requirements for this transit visa are nothing short of RADICAL! The exercise I had to undergo has been well documented on LivingStylishlyWell in an article entitled “Broken Britain – It’s no joke. Keep out!”
Check it out:
However, to those holders of the above-mentioned passports this can create major problems and involve a huge expense if you wish to:
a) use Heathrow airport as a transit hub to change planes to another destination
b) land at Heathrow airport from, for example, Cape Town, and then travel by bus/train/taxi to Gatwick to connect to a European destination
The UK Border Agency makes no distinction between a so-called illegal worker, foreign national prisoner or simple tourist. Fact.
Let’s take the example of someone who has landed in Heathrow during June 2009, connected to Gatwick, flown to Marseille and is returning to Cape Town via Gatwick/Heathrow in mid-July (ie after the deadline).
A ‘Transit Visa’ is necessary. This entails visiting the UK Visa Agency office in Marseilles armed with pictures, Euros (plenty), a 30 page form all completed (colour of underpants mandatory), copies of bank statements to denote you have the funds to connect on a 60 minute bus journey, proof of employment, letters from your hosts, a signed document stating you will “NOT SIGHTSEE or SHOP WHILE IN TRANSIT” – and make an on-line appointment to see an immigration officer.
Once you have waited three and a half hours after your appointment time has come and gone, you are interviewed, and then handed back a letter and a sealed envelope and told, “Go to the Post Office, post it to Paris and wait!”
26 Euros later your envelope (including your Passport and precious Shengen visa) is in the hands of La Poste and you wait, and wait. Our example is traveling to Paris in a weeks time to collect the visa.
Ironically, this weekend the English newspapers are full of brochures and supplements marketing Britain to the British – alongside corrupt politicians, disaffected citizens, a Speaker less House of Parliament (they fired him for being useless) and thousands of centimeters on how good the British Lions are.
They need to market Britain to the British – no self-respecting visitor needs go near Heathrow ever again.
Honestly, until they sort this out I’ll never go to Europe or the States via London again, even if British Airways are giving the flights away (which they are doing at the moment). It will be unfortunate to skip the little visit with friends in London on the way but it’s just not worth the pain. I will happily pay double for flights and go direct to the States or via Frankfurt or Munich for Europe.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Very true! To extend my student visa to stay in the UK I have to pay 585 pounds, wait a month for an appointment, and have 20 000 pounds in my bank account for at least one month!! I’m 22, where the fuck am I supposed to get that kind of money??
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
Was there again in Jan… There are many other great places to visit in the world… Avoid London.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:39 pm
London/UK – what a dump….
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:58 pm
London sucks great big ____ and I will never go to that dank, depressing city again!!!
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:59 pm
And I even have a British passport!
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Cape Town UK Visa, three and a half hour wait in queue at ten in the morning, makes Strand Street look like a UIF queue.Any wrong details on forms requires another R 991.00 fee and reapplying.
chaos and their website sucks like an old electrolux
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Very very true…the same goes for the British Virgin Isles were the same rules apply! They suck!
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
This country (without the ‘o’) is run by a bunch of utter bloody knobs. The entire lot of them. Makes me sick. Luckily I’m here on an ancestral visa which meant i had to work here for 4-5 years to get my citizenship. They’ve just decided they’d like to just up that out of the blue to about 10ish years. Which i sure as f*ck won’t be hanging around for. 3 years wasted. Dicks.
June 23rd, 2009 at 3:58 pm
I decided in March to avoid the UK as a transit destination having read up about all the pain it gave. Also not worth the visa drama to go there for a visit. In the past, I’ve always landed up visiting the UK as it was an easy option, along with Switzerland etc. Now, they’ve chased me away. What a pity one would think!
But look at it differently. Because of their shit, I have decided to do what I should have done a long time ago. Visit new places. See new things. Go to unusual countries.
What’s so great about the UK anyway? Transit was convenient admittedly. Big deal. I lived there long enough and left, because it gave me a pain. So short of visiting friends, there’s no need ever to go back.
The inconvenience of the visa has given me a really good excuse to move on and do something a little more exotic, challenging and interesting.
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:02 pm
I had to get a Tier 1 visa (new HSMP) – took me 6 months (had to have £2,700 in bank for 3 months)… well it was the best 6 months I ever spent, on the beach in Durban… now I’m here, looking out my window from my office down on Oxford Street… 3 floors up isn’t high enough to do much damage – what a shit hole. Only reason I’m here is to see other countries… Fact…
June 23rd, 2009 at 5:17 pm
Hate to say it, but they’re a bunch of racists too! I applied for a 5yr multiple entry visa a month after a colleague applied – with the same criteria and documentation as well as to the same consulate… I was refused, she was approved. After stealing my €500 too!!! Apparent reason? Insufficient documentation… hmmm, bollocks! We are both international civil servants working abroad, my contract is valid for 2 years longer than hers – the only difference is I am not lily-white.
They can shove their poncy *&%#@!
June 24th, 2009 at 1:31 am
Saffirs have brought it on themselves. With thousands and thousands of Saffirs arriving in the UK each month on visitor visas and staying for years it’s hardly unexpected.
the South African passport is currently not worth the paper it is printed on. it is a known fact that it is one of the easiest passports to obtain frauduantly. South Africa has been identified as a haven for money laundering etc. etc.
you cannot blame the Brits for tightening up their borders. soon every country, except your loving neighbors Zim will look two or three times at the border when presented with a Saffir passport.
sorry but its fact!
June 24th, 2009 at 1:36 am
@OffBrits
why the fck do you always insist on playing the damn race card whenever something doesn’t go your way! fck, best you stay in SA where everything is handed to you on a fcking plate! my gawd….
i work in passports and immigrations services, and trust me we aint racist. we aint out trying to screw you. if they said there was a problem with your application there probably was. some small detail, no matter.
take your head out of your ass and look in the mirror; the whole world is not out there trying to make the lives of black people as difficult as possible! ps. i aint lily-white either; but i don’t wear a chip on my shoulder!
June 24th, 2009 at 4:41 am
No comfort that when the DG or senior Home Affairs Officials travel to the UK, taxpayer money probably pays their visa application fee.
June 24th, 2009 at 6:56 am
I applied for a 10 years business visa. The cost was R3126 or something, according to the website and the final website page giving me details of the amount to pay, bank account information and so on. So I paid and took the receipt along with my application to the Visa place in Cape Town. So shit compared to the US Embassy.
So I go in and they check that I’ve paid before letting me into the office. The “security guy” tells me that I haven’t paid enough. The amount to pay is R7,000 or something. I explain that I just followed instructions and did what I was told. He tells me that I must come back when I’ve paid more. Fucking dildo. Seriously. He said the prices went up 2 weeks ago and that the website is already updated. Fuck him.
So I negotiate. I ask him what I can get for the money I paid. He says I can get a 2 year business visa. So that’s what I did. I got it.
There was a difference of R60, which they had to refund me. I filled in the refund form and after about 3 or 4 months I still haven’t received the refund.
Their process is flawed in other ways too (comparing to the US VISA process). They take all your documentation, including your passport and post it to Pretoria. When they are finished with it (in at least 10 working days) you can collect it at the same Cape Town building you went to for the application. What a mission.
The US Visa process is beautiful. You drive far, but it’s a lovely drive. You go in, wait a few minutes for the interview. The interview takes an extraordinarily short amount of time and then they grant you the visa. There and then! Then you move around the room to the DHL desk and pay them R60something to deliver the passport to you in 3 days. That was a beautiful experience.
But I enjoyed London. It was a nice place to spend a few days before heading to New York. Pity about the smelly British people though.
Gross.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:05 am
@Ryan
Omigod a real live pencil-pusher graces us with his presence and spews forth a torrent of Xenophobic bile.
Last I checked the July bombers were mostly UK citizens of Pakistani descent, but UK citizens nonetheless. No Safas there pal.
As for money laundering, look to your own little rocky outcrops in the Channel you tit.
Fact is the UK is broke and will be for generations. 400 000 SA trips to UK per year X R000’s… do the maths. The monkeys clearly need the cash wherever they can get it.
Can’t wait for the almost complete obsolesence of UK as a transit point or tourist or even business destination for the bulk of the globe. Let them keep their millions of Poles, Russians, Pakistani’s, Nigerians etc. At least the bulk of Saffas going to the UK have been productive, tax payeing individuals. Many of the former are merely parasites that will only suck what little remains out of the UK coffers in the long run. When the millions of overtaxed yonger UK citizens start looking to abaondon ship, let’s be sure that all chosen destinations ensure mammoth fees and proportionate administrative discomfort for them.
June 24th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Just came from UK recently,if you have visited the UK in the last 6 months and /or have exit and entry stamps from the UK in your current SA passport then you dont have to apply for the visa.
But like others have mentioned,fly to other destinations which are WAY better such as Barcelona,Amsterdam and Berlin !
Safe!
Z
June 27th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
Correct me if I am wrong.. I read recently (in the SA press) that the British have stopped some 6000 travellers on falsely issued SA passports in the last 4 years – most of them Pakistanis. Pak is now looking like the world’s #1 hot-bed for breeding terrorists and many of these people have been blocked from entering Britain on their Pakistan passports for obvious reasons. Yet they can magically get SA passports from the wonderful SA Dept of Home Affairs. Perhaps South Africans should sort out their own corruption before screaming “racism” at Britain. The British
don’t make these rules up just for fun. Or is it racist to find any fault with the “rainbow nation”?
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:06 pm
I dont know why i bother! two years it has taken me waiting for an appeal to come through,two and a half years,just for a holiday.i made a silly mistake in my application so i dont blame the south african employed british high commission visa officers.
i ask myself,why,for who? what should i do this again for?
but i believe in britain and some day when i have a legal brit passport i will enjoy sitting on their side laughing at all of you trying to get in.
haha