The Story of the Extension Letter

These days I am in the middle of getting my visa sorted.

A bit of background, I am here on a work permit which is in the process of being extended. Since the work permit is being extended the visa which goes along with it also needs to be extended.

The visa is handled by the Home Office - Border and Immigration Agency. But the Work Permit Extension is handled by a different department altogether.

I was waiting for my work permit extension letter to come through but I had to apply for the visa before the letter came. So I sent off the application (after a lot of confusion) with the letter to be sent once I got it.

Back to the story.

So today I got the letter. I called up the Home Office to ask them where to send the letter. After a 10 minute wait holding the phone, they told me that the address would be given to me by the Work Permits department and were helpful enough to give me a number.

So I called up the Work Permits department and after another 10 minute wait they tell me that I don't need to send the extension letter because the two departments 'do communicate with each other'.

This set the snake of doubt in my stomach.

I used the basic assumption that no government department anywhere in the world can be THAT efficient and called the Home Office again to confirm this fact. The reaction was a mixture of shock and horror. They wondered how come I was given this piece of wrong information because 'obviously they would need to see the extension letter'.

I thanked my common sense (and predictability of governments all over the world) got the address (which I suspect was pulled right off a website because that was the address I was originally going to send it at if I couldn't get the address).

When dealing with government machinery let me quote the X-Files:

" Trust No-one!"

But one thing I felt really happy about. That this among other things unifies countries all over the world!
Government departments always give out the wrong (and contradictory) information no matter how organised they may seem!

:)