Hello ,
Greetings from Sheffield and the HQ of AW.
Last week I was telling you about some seismic events, and that the clocks would go back this weekend (I lied) - you can read about it here.
Since then it seems a lot has been happening.. every-day at AW a new container.. new stock and back in stocks galore. To say it's busy is an understatement, we have shifts working all hours and our goods in team are fulling hero shifts to ensure all goods are checked and booked in. A whole year of product development and design is finally coming home to fruition. All good reasons to celebrate.
But (have you been following the exiled in Spain Rodrigo story?).. well last friday, we got word that a decision had been made, Monday his online status after 7 months and 6 days was updated and and a message came that his passport was actually on the way. Tuesday at 10.47am hours a courier arrived with an envelope within which was Rodrigo's Brazilian passport - last seen half a year ago, but now almost miraculously containing a UK visa.
By Wednesday at 10.50am he was clearing immigration in Malaga airport by 3.34pm Rodrigo arrived at our offices in Sheffield together with a very very very.. happy wife and cheers and welcome home cake from the team.
In the evening we consumed a touch too much champagne in a local bistro to celebrate the happy return. The nightmare is over, and now they can finally plan a future together.
Seriously though, many couples don't make it this far. There are thousands of couples in the UK with the misfortune of falling in love with a foreigner. Marriage to a foreign person does not mean you can be automatically together in this country. Far from it. We (our government) have devised a down right evil and divisive system to force couples apart and then break up the relationship though financial pressure and devious manipulative systems. There are forums, where marriage sponsor visa applicants chart their journeys.. sad testimonies to broken marriages where the costs become too high or the emotional traps too much bear. News is the rules are changing again.. now the sponsor in these applications i.e. the British half of the couple will also have to submit their passport for the duration of the application. So they cannot even travel out of the country to be with their husband or wife. Rodrigo's application, according to official guidelines should have taken 15 working days, in fact it took.. 105 working days - he was exiled for a total of 7 months and 7 days.