We are still trying to get a visa for our second scholarship winner. It is becoming very trying. By Kate
We're coming up on the third week in June 2010 and Unathi, our second scholarship winner, is still not anywhere near the UK. She is in South Africa.
Granted, soccer-mad South Africa may be a more exciting place to be at this precise moment and I am trying to console myself with the thought that she is pleased not to miss this time there. However (and it is a very big however), by anyone’s standards, waiting for over a year for a visa to materialise is trying in the extreme.
This is what we have done so far :-
- Spent a lot of time on an application for a Tier 4 student visa and then spent about £400 on the application only to be told that we were not in fact eligible even to apply as we are a business and not a college. Obviously, the helpful and not at all faceless UK visa department we dealt with here made sure that they retained every penny of the money despite this fact.
- Tried, through a helpful immigration lawyer, to see if there was anything that could be done on the above. When he stopped returning our calls, we had to conclude that there wasn’t.
- Persisted with the UK visa department who eventually conceded that we could ask for a business visitor's visa. We had avoided this option since the visa's are for 6 months only but things were becoming ridiculous and we were open to all possibilities.
- Liz then spent an inordinate amount of time putting together an application which fulfilled every single criterion for just such a visa. We have been completely clear and transparent regarding what this visit is about and what it means and have changed things slightly to fit with the bureaucratic requirements.
- Paid another chunk of money – around £300 this time - for an interview for Unathi at the British Consulate in Cape Town and spent more time and money getting every last bit of paperwork ready and sent to her. We expected that this really would be the end of what had become a very long and arduous process.
Oh, how moronically hopeful we were: It was not the end of the process. Unathi was turned down and I subsequently entered into endless email communications with a selection of people in the visa departments, each coming up with different reasons for why this has happened. The explanations often contradicted information we received here or indeed information contained on their own web sites.
However as time and emails went on, it seemed that gates to London were clanging closed with alarming finality and that it didn’t really matter what we did - the ethos now is to keep out everyone possible at all costs.
I am completely frustrated and not a little angry at how vastly unjust this is. We are going to keep fighting and, with grim determination, will by hook or by crook, find a way to get Ms Stemela over here. We are clearly not grooming potential cocaine smugglers, or dabbling in the sex trade or harbouring infidel terrorists. Unathi has a child, a fiancé and a job as a waitress at Spier in South Africa and obviously has no intention of trying to remain here. Our scholarship is extensively documented on this web site and quite a few others and, while it is a drop in the ocean of what needs to be done, it is something that hopefully contributes to the future in Africa.
I know that this country, the West in general – fuck it, the whole damn world – is in a state of crisis. And I know that unemployment here is rising and, with the cuts that are a-coming – is set to continue to increase. We are taking steps to become involved in a government apprenticeship scheme and aim shortly to be doing a version of the scholarship for someone more local but the fact of the matter remains that while a young person in this country with a less salubrious start may need a program like this, a young, previously disadvantaged person in South Africa needs it far, far more.
So it's time to please send a prayer out to the deity responsible for mindless, idiotic bureaucracy and implore him or her to throw us a frigging bone here. Unathi Stemela has waited long enough.
