Another 'kick in the teeth' by UKVI...

Fried food seems to be quite a 'staple' of the Philippines diet, in my experience... Maybe due to the American influence?

I try to encourage my wife to ween herself off of fried food but she refuses to budge.

My oh my... I am away from the Forum for 1 day and we have veered off onto the subject of football and fried chicken... lol

@Leegrace - Ah I see, the Post you disagreed with was from a member whose largely inflammatory contributions I have chosen to block, hence I hadn't seen it!

Still waiting for a response to my email sent to UKVI last Friday... or a decision!

Do you also believe, therefore, the hypothetical scenario where -

Customer B arrives at the check-in desk of an airline, a single traveller with minimal luggage, 5 minutes before the desk closes;

Customer A (a family of 4) have been stood in the check-in queue for 90 minutes -

Should B automatically take precedence over A because he is theoretically quicker to process? No!

Ever heard of 'first come, first served'?

I'm not for one minute suggesting ECOs only deal with one case at a time from start to finish. My argument was that 2 non-Priority applications, a month apart, should not take a month's difference in time to reach a decision!

I am sure we could fill this thread with hypothetical situations and beyond.
Without knowing the full picture off any application against another application it would be impossible to comment with any great certainty.
What I do know is that application packs won't be acting as table legs.
I hope you get the decision you Cleary deserve.

What we can say for certainty, as I previously posted is that the UKVI have a proven record of ineptness. A proven record of getting the decision wrong. This is not speculation and is not disputable. So we do not have to go round and round in circles in the manner of Punch and Judy over this.

Kuya’s application is just one of a number of outcomes that spring to mind. This can of course be located in this forums archives. There are many examples of where the officer summing up has missed the presence of sufficient evidence, misquoted acceptance criteria or simply breaking the very Immigration regulations that they are working too. What we do not know is why exactly and yes we can only surmise. But it is pretty obvious therefore that somewhere in the whole process ineptness, incompetence, or whatever is playing a part in the wrong decisions being issued. Perhaps too many junior staff are involved, perhaps they are overworked (again there has been evidence in the past to say that this is the case), perhaps they lack good management or proper procedure. Perhaps all of these. Speculation as to why, yes, but speculation as to whether, definitely not.

We have heard about the need to stand up to audit and that being a reason for the process being a fantastic example of a perfectly working well oiled machine. But any QA or QC seems to be absent. Otherwise some of the daft outcomes would never have happened. Absence of cross checking is very clear as for some of the daft historical decisions that have come to the fore clearly were not spotted by any internal checking procedure. So who within the staffing is tracking application progress? Anybody? Who gives a stuff amongst them, anybody? Who mans the enquiries line? From the sound of it the individual is either a temp who’s focus is on filing their nails or maybe even a 10 year old (steady on, just jesting a little there) but there is no disputing there are obvious indications that there is something not quite right about the individuals manning the enquiry line. Again we can only speculate as to why, but the evidence for lack of Competency is there.

Under the table leg or being used as a paper aeroplane? Probably not but it’s good to look at the funny side now and again. Probably not but it is anyone’s guess as to the actual reasons why.

If it is understaffing that is the root cause then given the amount of money they rake in, they should be employing more staff.

They have no excuse. Because they can be incompetent or because they can mess the applicant about is not acceptable.

I bet the first thing on the lips of the lads in the office this morning will be “did you see the game last night?” rather than “We really do need to get UKDJ’s result out quickly as it is not fair to let it drag on for any longer”. ( Jesting again but you get the drift ) ( I have to sign post this stuff otherwise it can be taken too literally ).

Possibly you have blocked the same person as me then?

UKVI has "a proven record of ineptness" and "a proven record of getting decisions wrong"? Really? Where is the evidence for your assertions or are we expected to take your word and accept your accusations without question and at face value - obviously you expect us to since your next sentence reads "This is not speculation and is not disputable". The only case you are able to cite where an incorrect decision was originally given is that of this forum's late owner, Sean.

What you're forgetting - or maybe don't realise - is that until quite recently, applications were dealt with outside the country in centres employing locally recruited staff - that was certainly true of Manila which is where Mrs Sean's application was originally considered. For various reasons - and it's reasonable to suppose that quality was one - the Home Office decided to bring all this work in-house and now all the applications for every visa category and from every country in the world is dealt with by a single office in Yorkshire. I agree that there have been some questionable decisions in the past and documentary evidence provided by applicants was occasionally overlooked. However all these applications are assessed by HUMANS, not machines, and humans are prone to fallibility, they make mistakes. Are you so perfect that you can justifiably criticise others based on very, very scant information and no knowledge of those concerned? No, I didn't think so.

You criticise the responses given by the enquiries telephone/email service but you overlook the fact that in the majority of cases, enquiries are not being made by the applicant but by a third party claiming to be related to the applicant. UKVI is required to respect client confidentiality just as your lawyer, your doctor and your priest are. They can not give-out information willy-nilly however inconvenient that might be. What do you expect? Do you seriously expect the clerical officer who answers the phone to go off and track-down the application file from the thousands of 'live' applications, read it and give you a detailed response? Any information they do provide will, of necessity, be nebulous. It also has a statutory responsibility concerning all data submitted and those regulations have just been considerably made more stringent (GDPR). Your characterisation that enquiries to UKVI are dealt with by "a temp who’s focus is on filing their nails" is sexist and frankly insulting which you compound by adding "there is something not quite right about the individuals manning the enquiry line". How do you know? Have you used it? And by the way, your remarks don't quite stack up as you described meetings with the immigration service as being helpful.

Your intervention isn't helpful to anyone in UKDJ's most unfortunate position.

In order to give UKVI 'the benefit of the doubt' and for the purpose of a balanced view, I do wonder if this - and previous! - government's handling of the Windrush fiasco has had some impact on the ever-increasing 'target' times for decisions to be made... 60, 90, 120 days...?
We used to have a saying in the police force - "We can't just open another box of police officers", when workload requires!

This doesn't, however, explain or excuse the reason for my original Post!

Ha. Nice saying.

But you can transfer ECOs from Citizenship to Settlement cases as workload dictates. Just to give an example. Ideally they would be multifaceted / multi skilled.

Whaddaya think? I know the Immigration Officers I dealt with worked all areas of the Immigration journey and journey to citizenship, depending on what came in.

Agreed - but at the end of the day (sorry for the football reference!lol) you only have a finite number of 'bods', whatever job they are tasked with... and you can be pretty certain the Windrush fiasco is the hottest political potato of the moment!

I understand that.

My employer’s business involves processing and assessing of a certain form of documentation. It is the individual we are assessing and their submitted documentation is the evidence. The numbers coming in vary throughout the year. When it is quieter we do other things as a company. When it is busier we drag more people in within the pool to cope up with the workload. If and when some are dealt with later rather than sooner and outside our target time, then a personal and polite email is sent to the individual concerned explaining the delay. Likewise at Christmas etc we send out general emails to all asking for them to bear with us. The tone of the email is always apologetic, polite and we follow up on our word. If need be we are easily contactable. We are providing a fee paying service where we treat our customers with respect.

I suppose we do have to ensure we have the capacity to do that, but the UKVI with its scale of charges should surely strive to do the same.

But again, to reiterate, my sympathy is with the genuine applicant and not the incompetent UKVI.

Not forgetting the thick end of 4.3 million EU citizens applying for residency permits and a few thousand rich Russians whose Tier 1 investors' visas have additional requirements, foreign students who need visas to study here .....

That is the price we pay for public services... no competition means they can do as they please!
I certainly don't advocate handing over any more of these services to private enterprise, but there should be far more accountability and better communication with 'customers'...

They are not paid to provide a service to you, they provide a service to the Government, the Government is the customer.

Its not all about you

Um............. your sure to turn up??