Post
by Shekharaca81 » Tue Jan 29, 2013 7:02 pm
I must thank the members of immigration board without whose help it would have been impossible for me to apply and get the ILR.
I am sharing my experience today at PEO Croydon so it can help others.
Application for myself and wife and a baby.
Arrival
My appointment was at 10:25. I arrived a bit late at 10:30 and was worried that they would turn me away. However, to my surprise, that did not happen. They let me in and after the security check I went and collected my token number. A word of advice here. When I was given my token number, the guy at the counter had a problem with his computer because of which he gave me a hand written token number. Normally, a computer generated token number is automatically transferred to the first floor where you are called to submit your documents. However, in this case, because it was hand written, I waited for about an hour only to realise that my entry was not registered. So please be careful when being given a hand written token.
Biometrics
After the token is generated, we have to then go to either 1st/2nd or 3rd floor where our documents are checked. In my case it was the 1st floor.
I went up to the first floor at about 11:30 am. I waited for about an hour before they called me for biometrics. Its normally much quicker than that if your token is correctly generated. My and 2 dependents biometrics was taken at 12:30. Then there was a long wait of about 2 hours. Again this is normally only 30-40 minutes. This is the time when your biometric details are sent to their head office to do background checks. In my case I have no idea why it took so long.
Documents handover
At about 14:30, I was finally called to hand over my documents to the caseworker. I handed over to him my whole bunch including photocopies.
No questions were asked at this point.
Wait
After the handover we headed out to grab a quick lunch and were back at 15:30. I was called almost immediately, and was quite pleasantly that for the first time today, something happened on time. But my excitement was short lived as I was called to remind that I had forgotten to give my Biometric card when I had handed over my documents! I handed over my BRP card at that point.
More waiting....
At about 17:00, I was finally called and told that the application was successful.
Reaching home
I am sure you are not interested in knowing which train I took to get home. So I will skip those details.
Some tricky issues
1. My wife was my dependent on tier 1 for only about 8 months. This does not matter. The only thing that matters is the 2 year cohab period.
2. My wife was out of the UK for 6 months when she went to India to give birth. Again this doe not matter as long as you can show the 2 year cohab period.
Any questions, please ask.
Good Luck!
Last edited by
Shekharaca81 on Wed Jan 30, 2013 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.