For the first time since the middle of August I didn’t wake up this morning thinking about the UK Home Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, not immediately, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then I went to double check that it hadn’t all been a dream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The last six weeks felt crazy stressful, but this morning – with just a tiny bit of distance – that stress felt overblown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don’t get me wrong, the stress was definitely<\/em> real. I definitely<\/em> felt it. And Dawnise would definitely<\/em> tell you it definitely<\/em> affected my mood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I wasn’t actually in any real jeopardy<\/em>. I had a visa. It allowed me to be in the country, to work, to and travel. And that visa had plenty of time left before it expired. So no real risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On top of that, I had two<\/em> lawyers who were confident that I was “in the right,” and our member of parliament\u2019s office was advocating for me, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Worst case – if the only way to resolve the situation was to submit a new application – it would cost me some time and some money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I suspect most people who’ve ever gone through any immigration process probably remember how stressful it can be. Governments and bureaucracies seem opaque and capricious. Each application is a just one of many a caseworker will handle in a week. To the case worker the decision on an application is just another decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the person, or family, behind that application, their entire future can hinge on the outcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When things go wrong, having access to resources, and specifically to sound legal advice, can make a massive difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had a bunch of advantages and I got lucky. Dawnise and I agreed we wanted to pay that luck forward – and decided to donate what we were expecting to spend on a second application to organizations that provide immigration-related legal aid. I asked around, and some friends pointed me at JCWI<\/a> in the UK and Unlocal<\/a> in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope it helps someone who needs it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For the first time since the middle of August I didn’t wake up this morning thinking about the UK Home Office. Well, not immediately, anyway. Then I went to double check that it hadn’t all been a dream. The last six weeks felt crazy stressful, but this morning – with just a tiny bit of … Continue reading “You Got Lucky”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-london-calling"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1260"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1277,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1260\/revisions\/1277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oubliette.org\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}