Pre-settled status received

Today is my lucky day: I, finally, received my pre-settled status. As I told you I am Italian, I lived in the UK for 6 months last year for an internship and I recently won a PhD position in the UK again.

What is different between 2020 and 2021?

Something happened: BREXIT. I traveled to UK last year without any problems, with my national ID and a simple flight ticket, I live my life without any problems, I move a little bit (following always COVID restrictions) and I had 0 problems.

This year, 2021, UK is not in Europe anymore. I don't want to discuss their choice, I am not an expert in politics and economics so I am not going to judge the decision, but I can tell you what happened to me. To enter the country now, even if we are European, we need a visa. The visa could be a work visa, a student visa, or a tourist visa depending on your situation. But in some cases, like mine, if you have lived before 31st December 2020 in the UK you can apply for this magic status called "pre-settled status", that you don't need a visa to enter/exit the UK.

Visa or pre-settled status?

The deadline to apply for this magic opportunity was 30th June, and guess when I received and decided to accept the offer for my PhD? Easy answer! 1 July. The day after. Luckily in some cases, the government gave an extension of the deadline and I managed to apply.

This application was not easy at all, we need to use an app to scan your document but my smartphone was not able to download this app. I needed to wait until evening and my boyfriend let me use his phone for all the procedures. After this, you should wait for 5 working days till 1 month to receive your answer. Well, I waited 2 months.

In the meantime, I was not sure about starting all the procedures for a student visa. A visa is really expensive and time-consuming, you need to travel to Rome to take so language exam and to sign all the documents. I tried to avoid all this waste of money and time.

Happy day! ... or not?

Yesterday evening, I was eating my favorite pizza and I received an email from the UK gov asking me to upload other evidence to support my stay in UK last year.
I did immediately, this was so important to me, and this morning they asked me for other documents. AGAIN.

I got angry, nervous, and anxious... I started crying, over-breathing due to stress so I decided to wait in the afternoon and my plan was to call the gov and try to understand what was the issue with my situation.

Final email!

During my calming and relaxing lunch, I receive another email, with the confirmation of the pre-settled status! I don't know what happened, something mysterious and magic happened because without uploading anything new I received my status. Long story, with a nice final, until now.

Not uploading any photos because all the data are sensitive.