On Tue, 2007-03-06 at 21:04 +0100, Holger Levsen wrote: > Hi, > > to send out the invitation letter for people needing visas to come to > Edinburgh, we need help to review it, so that we dont send out invitations > that could bring us in trouble. > > If you can and want to help, please reply to this mail. Also if you know more > details what kind of help is actually needed. But basically its reviewing an > already written letter and checking back with a person who knows about the > legal details.
Holger isn't quite clear here: we don't need general proof-reading (although obviously that won't do any harm). We need someone to check information with UKvisas and/or with a UK immigration lawyer. People outside the UK could also help by speaking to the UK embassy in their country. There are two different letters. One is a straightforward invitation letter, inviting the person to attend the conference. This is needed for example by people who have to ask their employer for time off work, and could be useful to certain people in relation to immigration issues. The second letter is a 'sponsorship' letter, to be included as part of the information in a UK visa application. This letter gives details of the conference, details of the individual person it relates to, and details of what funding/support we are supplying to the person in question. We have followed the instructions and recommendations which UKvisas give relating to this subject, but since none of us have much experience in dealing with UKvisas it is possible there is something that could be improved. On the one hand, the sponsorship letter is not in fact that important a part of the visa application: the UK immigration authorities are not really concerned to know why someone wants to come to the UK, but to have proof that they want to go away again afterwards. Including information about a job/family/etc. that requires the person to go home after DebConf is more important than the contents of any letter from us. On the other hand, visa paperwork is a serious matter: if we make a mistake, people will be denied visas, and not just for DebConf: a UK visa refusal in the past generally makes it much more difficult to get a UK visa in the future. (A visa refusal can also mean that someone who could normally transit through the UK without special permission suddenly needs a transit visa to do so. A friend of mine was held at Heathrow airport and deported because she had not realised this, even though she would originally have left the UK on her next flight earlier than the time they deported her.) -- Moray _______________________________________________ Debconf-discuss mailing list Debconf-discuss@lists.debconf.org http://lists.debconf.org/mailman/listinfo/debconf-discuss
