As always, you think everything should be very straightforward but this application has probably confused me even more than the permanent residence card one!
If anyone knows answers to these your help is very much appreciated! (I do realise it's a lot of questions actually, sorry for that! Though I hope you find it a good (also brain-tickling) read.)
1. Regarding place of birth - if both my passport and my ID card (and even my UK provisional driving licence lol) have only put the country name as my place of birth (well, not even the name, just the 3 letter country code), am I okay to just use the country name in my application as the place of birth? Also, if I would choose to write the city name where I was born (instead of the country name, even though I'm not sure I would be able to find any document that mentions the city and not the country), is that okay? (Though I think I would actually prefer just the country name, as no one anywhere would recognise the city name and some people abroad might even mistake it for a city in the UK lol)
2. For the absences, is it possible to insert multiple countries per absence? For example, if was away visiting 2 countries, one of them for 5 days, the other one for 2 days, I don't think I can put them as separate absences as they mention in the application itself that 2 days don't count, so that kind of confused me. But when I did try to insert multiple countries separated with a comma, the website only used the last one as the name.
3. This is one of the most confusing ones - I was born [in a EU country] stateless (due to my parents being also stateless, so I couldn't be born as a citizen), though because my parents later on acquired their EU nationality, they then registered me as a citizen (I think I was like 4 or 7 years old or something), and so I am a EU citizen myself (yay!). This, however, makes it confusing as I am not entirely sure whether this means I was my whole life a EU citizen or not (mostly because I wasn't naturalised which would mean acquiring citizenship once you naturalise, but rather registered as a citizen). And so, not sure if I need to do anything with the question "Do you currently hold, or have you ever held, any other nationality or citizenship?".
3.1. Sort of slightly related to the above question. The website is asking me for my parents details, and similarly there is a different version of the question there - "Have they always had the same nationality?". And I assume the answer to that is no, but in the follow up question "Their country of nationality when you were born" there is no option for stateless/no nationality there. There might be some hope with this one as there's an option "I do not have my parents' details" which I wouldn't necessarily feel good about using as I do have my parents' details! But can my application be refused if I do not give my parents' detail?
4. For the referees', is it okay if one of them (the "any nationality with professional standing" person) would not be a UK resident (having an oversees home address)? I find it to some extent easy to find a British person who knew me personally for 3 years, but a person with a professional standing (from that short list of approved occupations [list 1][list 2]) who have known me personally for 3 years and also lives in the UK - practically impossible to find!
4.1. Does a person with professional standing need to be officially employed and have an employment contract that states their occupation?
4.1.1. For example, a teacher that does private tuition (1-to-1 paid by cash).
4.1.2. Or an interesting one - a "teacher" who has 2 educational YouTube channels (one nearly 1m subscribers, second channel 400 thousand subscribers) which is essentially his full-time job. Also, in this second example, as that person teaches chemistry, technically you could call him a chemist? (based on say Oxford Dicrionary's definition - a person engaged in chemical research or experiments) As he does have a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Chemistry and does educational videos of his field, the chemicals and experiments with those. Not sure how modern-thinking the Home Office is (but I hope they are!).
Also, regarding document checkboxes:
5.1. “The passport issued by [country] for Mr [my name]” - Does this mean I need to send both my passport and ID card? (EEA citizen)
Below it has a separate checkbox “Mr [my name]'s evidence of identity” that allows an ID card…but what is even more confusing is the words “If you took the Life in the UK Test and used one of the above documents as evidence, you should use the same one here.” So if I used my UK provisional driving licence for the life in the UK test I need to send it too?
5.2. And also this part is a bit confusing as I thought only permanent residence card was required? "Proof of living in the UK for Mr [my name] - If you are an EEA National, you need to include letters from employers, educational establishments, or other Government Departments indicating your presence in the United Kingdom during the relevant period.” Or the "other Government Departments" part is the permanent residence card route?
Thanks for your time reading this!
