Please Sir, may I have a visa?

Ah, the U.K. working holiday visa. Or the Tier 5 Youth Mobility Scheme visa as it's called now; a much catchier name, said nobody ever. The hoops to be jumped through in the application process are numerous and metaphorically on fire so precision is vital. Don't get me wrong, applying as an Australian is significantly easier than most other nationalities. To apply as an American, for instance, is so impossible it sounds more like some kind of secret club only found and entered by visiting a back alley and knocking three times on the second door to the left and knowing the password and secret handshake. It's like the unicorn of visas. Then again, if a country's reciprocal visa policy is basically a blanket "no" like the U.S.'s, you can't expect your citizens to be made very welcome, from a visa standpoint, elsewhere. I can only imagine what the process would be like if you were applying from somewhere like...Nigeria...Iraq...any of the many countries not known for their travel/visa opportunities.

Now, having just undermined my own point let me proceed to tell you about my Australian passport holder process of hoop jumping. Or rather...the ring master. Sorry, that metaphor is tired. Basically the official U.K. visa website is shit. Of all the governments in the world you would expect to have a clear, eloquent official website the U.K. would pretty much top the list. But you (meaning you, my naive past self) would be wrong. The visa website content appears to have been written by an indifferent person whose fourth and most tenuously grasped language is English. The content refers back to things it never told you, asks you for information, then doesn't provide you with enough space to enter said information (been to more than ten countries in the last ten years? How foolish of you, prepare to get involved in a very coy game of save and refresh to illicit enough 'Add More' options) and is so full of typos and oddities you half expect the final page to thank you for your financial assistance to a Ghanian prince with temporary money woes. If I had just come across the website, rather than linked to it from the official U.K. immigration webpage, I would've suspected it was a fake. A defensive little missive in the top left corner, stating that this is a prototype system (they just recently added an online application option) and they're still working through some issues, follows you throughout the application process.

For additional novelty, once you complete the online application you have to print it out and take the paperwork into a biometric appointment. Unfortunately, I live in the little viking outpost of Australia-Hobart, in the state of Tasmania, and we're too much of a back water (despite being a capital city) to have nice things. Like official offices for biometric scanning for example. So off to Melbourne I went, basing my appointment time around the good airfares.

I arrived for my appointment at a small office which had then been subdivided into multiple tiny offices with individual locking doors for each. I was greeted by a security guard who took his job very seriously. There was a system for how things must proceed, a system which I was about to accidentally confound, but he soldiered on. He let me into the office, I said "hello", he said "hello, please sit down". I proceeded to start removing my many layers of coats, sweaters and scarves so that I could sit down, chatting about the weather, how cold it was... He stared at me and repeated "Please sit down". Right, apparently we can't go through the rules until I'm sitting, so I sat down, one arm in a sweater, one arm out. He informed me all I could take in was my wallet and my application paperwork and no it could not be in envelopes, no envelopes! Everything else had to be placed in a locker there in the first room. So I proceeded to try and stuff all my things into the little locker and lean on the door to shut it. "A quarter turn to the left, then all the way around to lock it, follow me please". "Oh sure!" I say cheerily, pressing on the locker, turning the key. It doesn't lock. I turn it the other way, still not locked. The guard stands awkwardly by... "No, the other way.. No you have to..." "got it!" I declare with a triumphant little thump on the locker, far too gregarious an action for the solemnity of the occasion, his unamused expression tells me. 

 We proceed to the next little room, empty except for a table in the corner. He instructs me to lay my application out on said table, then he looks at it. "First page of the application on top please" he says gesturing to the pile. I step forward and move the covering first page off the pile and step back. Then he picks the papers up anyway to better see the application number on it which he duly records on his clipboard next to my name and appointment time. "Stand on the red dot please". I scan the room. On the floor, across the room and a little to the left, is a red sticky dot carefully reenforced by a layer of tape over it. "Ah, right sure. Red dot" I stand on the dot and he security wands me front and back, then I'm permitted through the next door.

We're in a waiting room with counters you're called to when it's your turn. There's no one on the far side of the desks. On our side is a girl having a bit of a nap. Two other people sit in the line of chairs the security guard gestures to and asks me to wait. I sit down and he leaves out the exit door. I wait. I shuffle my papers. I wait. Then the guard reappears and gestures to me "please, come with me. The door! The locker door is, is open". I go through the exit door with him back into the first room where my locker, not locked correctly as it turns out, has popped open and has scarves and coat sleeves hanging out of it all disorderly like. The guard seems a bit flustered and instructs me to use a second locker as well. Then, having flouted his linear system, he just lets me back in through the exit door. The waiting recommences.

I'd been feeling nervous about this appointment, it was such a process to get to that stage, an expensive process. But the lengthy wait is a good cure for that. After being nervous and hyper vigilant for awhile my brain tires of it and I space out, looking at the mural on the wall of London Bridge, Stonehenge and other British icons. A little red double decker bus wends its way along the bottom of the mural....

There's no clock in the room and phones were not on the permitted items list. I'm guessing they're even more of a no-no than envelopes, even when just for checking the time. After awhile a lady pops out a door from the inner sanctum office and announces that the system is down and the support centre is working on it, then she disappears again. Then another lady pops out and comes over, asking to see just my application. I hand it to her. "And your letter from the bank stating your funds?" She asks as she looks it over. I hand that to her, she reads it. Then she hands it all back to me, smiles and says "Good, that's all going to be good", then disappears behind the door again. I'm not sure what the point of that preemptive look was, but it's reassuring all the same. Who doesn't like to have an official looking person look at their paperwork and declare it vaguely, generally good?

A while later the same lady comes out and officially calls me over to the counter. She whizzes through my application in a very blase manner, stapling, highlighting and telling me were to sign. She asks if I'm flying into London and if I want to purchase an Oyster card right then and there. I tell her I don't want to count my chickens. "Pardon?" "You know, I just, don't want to count my chickens...before they hatch...I'll wait until I actually have the visa I mean" She smiles at me like "silly girl, of course you're going to get it". This lady's cavalier attitude certainly has a morale boosting quality to it, misplaced or no. She puts my paperwork in a big vacuum seal bag thing and hands it to me. "All finished, please have a seat, you'll be called shortly for your biometric scan". I sit down, the security guard reappears and stands poised with his hand on another door handle, looking intent. I'm called almost immediately and he sweeps the door open, gesturing me in, then he disappears again.

This room looks like they were really scraping the bottom of the barrel in the partitioning spaces process and appears to be a converted broom cupboard. Once sitting, the illuminating light for photos is so close to your face it's almost touching and feels more like an interrogation lamp. My finger prints are scanned, my photo is taken, I had over the vacuum seal bag. When I'm done the security guard is peering through the tiny window on the far side of the exit door and whips it open the moment I appear. I thank him and he formally bids me good bye and a good afternoon. Then has to stand there and wait awkwardly while I put all my layers back on and collect my stuff. I think he was kind of relieved to see me go.

Now my passport and application are on a little trip to Manila to be processed and I should hopefully be seeing them again in my mailbox in a week or two, my passport having acquired the new bling of a shiny British visa inside. Fingers crossed!