maile

For the past four or five years my husband has been taking a week's course at Oxford, England. The courses have been in poetry, music, etc. Now they are telling him that he actually needs a "student" visa and it has been very difficult to obtain. At this point, the consulate's office in LA is saying that the visa was UPSed overnight on the 17th (three days ago), UPS does not know where it is and before we received this notice the consulate's office on Wednesday told us to mail his passport ... which we did but they have not mailed anything back. Visa one unknown place, passport another. He leaves on Wednesday! There is only a recording at the consultate's office.

samtraveler

How does the consulate issue the visa without the actual passport? Doesn't the visa go directly in the passport? We just completed our UK visas ourselves (diifferent scenario via work permit). I guess I'm just confused as to why they would say the visa was overnighted to you without them actually having your passport?

nytraveler

Well, for a week's visit I would just have gone as a tourist - not a student - unless the school required it.

And agree that I have never heard of a visa being issued until the passport was in the hands of the issuer - otherwise how do they know who they're giving it to? Usually you give the passport and visa application to the agency at the same time and they return them together.

samtraveler

Yes and in fact our visas are directly affixed to a page of our passport.

maile

I think this has been sorted out. No one can explain why the e-mail was sent last Tuesday saying that the visa had been sent UPS overnight (without them having the passport). It obviously had not been sent. The consulate's office has now received the passport and told me the passport would be returned with the visa attached. This has been very confusing. And yes, the school did require the visa although for the past five years it had not been a requirement and we just never thought about it this time 'round. A student visa for one week????

PatrickLondon

It may be a side-effect of the general tightening up on the immigration documentation for foreign students. It sounds odd to me, but I haven't worked in this area for quite some time now: maybe the immigration people have been checking up on their records, but the problem is usually people who get student visas and then start working.

stfc

I have nothing to offer on the issue of visas but for background information there has been a clampdown on dodgy 'colleges' being used as a way of getting dodgy 'students' into the UK illegally. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pre...language.shtml refers.