UKC

I have a massive issue with a governmental decision as to my future and my daughter future and need to speak to someone of authority, what can I do or who do I see to make a difference quickly?
I have been massively misinformed by HM passport office and this puts my daughters first day at school on danger of not happening.


As if I need more issues, this has come as a massive shock.

Basically I have been working Haiti for the last 6 years and my daughter living in Santo Domingo across the border in Dominican republic. The HM passport office will not accept my application for my daughter to come here to the UK to live with me unless I can prove that we have been living at the same address as father and daughter. He mother is going to continue to work in Hispanola, for now, we both feel this is the best for all of us. I went to the offices in Durham and they told me without exception I can not complete the application without 3 forms of evidence that we are father and child and that we reside in the same address.

I'm blown away! What can I do. Sh1t Week? Yes, very much so.

How can we provide information that does not exist, but it does not make us less father and child, and mother openly enthusiastic for us to begin her education in the UK at 5 year old. Dear God, I expect this in the field I work and for people from developing countries, but not from my own support.
Then again, if this is the case, what support, what a failure they are.

In reply to Dominicandave:

I'd advise any of the following:
- Contract a lawyer who is a specialist in this area.
- Frame the question a little more factually and less emotively and put it on a legal advice forum.
- Frame the issue a little less factually and a little more emotively and send it in a letter to your local MP (I discovered a number of years back that your MP actually can kick an institution and get things moving, as long as it is a public one).
- Speak to citizens advice bureau (might not be their specialty but at minimum they can direct you who you should be talking to).
- Create your own "evidence" (actually, I really don't recommend this!)

It sounds as though you are running into the institutional "we have this way of doing things and it must always be done this way". Most often when an institution says "it can only be done this one way", what they mean is "other ways will only be found when someone raises merry hell about it".

You could even consider seeing if a newspaper would like to pick up the story but then you really are playing with a double edged sword made of fire.

In reply to Dominicandave:

Get some legal advice.

Has she been living with her mother? Is there anything - finances aside - that would prevent her coming to the UK with her mother and then staying here when mum returns to the DR?

You need a solicitor who knows about this kind of stuff.

Martin

In reply to Dominicandave:

As per the others you need professional advice.
I would start with Citizens Advice Bureau who will probably send you to a specialist charity/support group.