Comment by apexalpha
3 days ago
I had no idea travel was this difficult for people who aren't EU citizens.
Wow, I'm almost annoyed on the authors behalf of how much hoops there are to jump through.
>To apply for British citizenship, you need to prove you were physically in the UK on your application date but five years ago. Not approximately five years, not that week—that exact day when you press "submit" on the form minus five years. Miss it by 24 hours and your application is reject after months of waiting, and you have to pay a hefty fee to re-apply.
That's a hilarious requirement. I wonder how that ended up in there.
First, the author is actually wrong. The date is not 5 years before you submit, but is 5 years before the form is received by the home office! So there are a few days of uncertainty, depending on how fast Royal Mail was with the physical documents.
Additionally, I did a request for my information from the home office prior to filling in my form. After all, you have the right to request the information they have on you that will be used to verify your form. Kafka would be proud.
Let me tell you, Home Office doesn't have a clue where you were 5 years ago. It had approximately 50% of my trips, and frequently only had only one leg of the journey. Plane, ferry, train, sailboat, ... it didn't matter. It seems like they have not been keeping the information very well.
> It had approximately 50% of my trips, and frequently only had only one leg of the journey
Relevant current news: Home Office denying child benefits to 1000s of people because they had incomplete data of people vacation trips, so people were thought to have emigrated and never returned [0]. Some people who never even left (due to cancelled flights, denied boardings etc.) were also affected.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/01/hmrc-likely...
This is because the UK doesn't have exit checks. They rely on airlines to submit the information to them.
I guess this makes sense when you consider that there's an open border with Ireland. Though you'd think that the UK and Ireland could get together to track exits...
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As someone who's been through that dance twice, it's 5 years from the time (well, day) you press "Submit" if you're applying online, or $RANDOM days of Royal Mail nonsense if you choose to apply by post.
I agree though, the Home Office doesn't have a way of knowing where you were fore sure 5 years ago unless they got someone to go through your "days in and out of the UK" list and vetted/cross-referenced it. And even then it'd likely be incomplete and they'd have to guess.
My surmise is that they look at the level of effort you've put in to filling out that detail, and if the total days in/out isn't particularly a borderline case, then they just wave that bit through.
I would have thought that the point is that you're supposed to be there continuously for some considerable duration (and having worked through other processes of legal immigration) before applying for citizenship.
So the idea of trying to figure out exactly which day five years in the past you have to mention seems odd to me. If there's really no care being paid to the intervening time... well if you're trying to exploit a loophole like that I think I'd prefer that it's difficult... ?
i think they meant online, which could be different?
As someone that is about 50, we also had it this way in Europe.
Newer generations don't get how lucky they are to have been born into EU, appreciate it while it lasts.
Schengen is NOT a EU achievement.
Nations can sign Schengen, but are never forced to join the EU, nations can be EU members but are allowed to refuse the Schengen treaties.
Schengen is absolutely an EU achievement, although for some time it developed separately; it is now absorbed into EU law. Note that every Schengen country outside of the EU is a member of EFTA and to be in Schengen has to sign an association treaty with the EU.
Yes. Though it's part of the same broader 'European project', so it's permissible for people to be a bit lax when informally discussing these things.
Where have I said that on my comment?
I'm almost 50 and from Europe, never had to think about this stuff for a second.
Well I remember the fun days of crossing borders before EU, ordering stuff from computer magazines from other countries, having to deal how to pay them across countries, and so forth.
I also happened to work in Switzerland, before they made cross-region agreements with EU, and it was lot of burecratic fun, explaining the situation regarding a Portuguese, living in France and working in Switzerland.
I'm mid fourties and I remember bordercrossings were annoying back in the 90ies. I'm Danish so we didn't enter Schengen until around 2000. I guess it didn't help that I was young enough that we traveled by bus. Once when we were on a school trip to Prauge we had the Slovakia borderpatrol go through our entire bus while waving machineguns around.
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I guess you never tried to cross the Iron Curtain in your youth?
The sane side of the iron curtain. We've envied you for the longest time.
As a 29 year old that experienced EU citizenship then had it cruelly taken away by some stupidly thin margin of voters… feckin Brexit.
I get how lucky I was for 25% of my life expectancy.
>I had no idea travel was this difficult for people who aren't EU citizens.
Most people can't afford to travel to the Schengen Area for more than the visa-free limit of 90 days within a 180 day period.
Those that can are "digital nomads" and are almost certainly working illegally while travelling.
Most of those work restrictions are put in place to protect local labor. They just don't want tourists taking jobs from locals in tourist places without a permit, and without paying taxes. They really don't care much you're doing remote work for a corporation in California or writing a book.
> They really don't care much you're doing remote work for a corporation in California or writing a book.
They do, actually.
It’s for collecting taxes, which supports local infrastructure.
Going to another country, living within their infrastructure and consuming their services, but pretending that you’re not working (and therefore not paying local taxes) is something they don’t want.
Digital nomads who abuse the situation like it because they get the benefits of a country (and city, region, etc) without having to contribute to their taxes. Getting California level pay, not paying taxes, and living in what’s basically a vacation destination is the digital nomad dream.
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Then they should change the laws to match. I've heard this time and time again. All the digital nomads I know are dodging taxes.
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Last time I looked was a few years ago, but I was surprised how hard it was going to be to legally live in France while keeping my US tech job. My employer was happy to do what they had to to make it happen, but there just didn't seem to be a route in the French immigration system.
The options seemed to be:
- Get a job in France and get a work visa. This is very difficult due to economic protectionism.
- Come on a tourist visa and not work.
- Be provably independently wealthy and get some variety of golden visa. This meant proving that you had enough assets to live (lavishly I might add) long term without working.
No easy option for "I want to come to your country, get paid USD by a US company, but pay taxes to you!"
I think there have been some new developments regarding digital nomad visas since then. Still, seemed crazy given what a good arrangement it would have been for France.
It doesn't exist, because it's complex to set up and up until 5 years ago almost no one wanted to do this. Now some people want to do it, and they can use an Employer of Record via facilitating companies. But the visa situation will probably still be difficult, it's pretty much a gap
Illegally = like smoking weed in Amsterdam
Except few countries, all EU countries tolerate this
Although the EES biometric system that just got added is intended to crack down on this
Despite being required to, most crossings I did recently did not use it, though
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Indeed, the author describes a lifestyle I can hardly imagine, and then markets a product motivated by the resulting use cases.
> Most people can't afford to travel to the Schengen Area for more than the visa-free limit of 90 days within a 180 day period.
> Those that can are "digital nomads" and are almost certainly working illegally while travelling.
WTF are you talking about? The Schengen Area is right here and you don't need a visa to work anywhere else in it. That's the whole point.
If you are an EU citizen (or a citizen of one of the other Schengen Area countries) then yes, you have freedom of movement and can live and work anywhere in the area without a visa.
But the article isn't talking about being an EU Citizen. It's talking about having to count how many days have been spent in the Schengen Area by a third-country national.
Citizens of certain other countries (e.g. the USA or UK) can enter the Schengen Area visa-free for tourism or limited work-related activities (for up to 90 days in a 180 day period), but are not allowed to just do whatever work they want to.
Note that the comment I replied to was talking about non-EU Citizens.
If you don't live in the EU the rules are different. They often don't care but the rules are there. (I've been sent through the EU citizen line with my US passport which is normally fine but my coworkers on a multi year work in the EU visa have to be more careful about the right stamps - though I'm not sure exactly what this means)
They're talking about people from outside the EU presumably.
> I called the app Residency and you can get it here. No subscriptions, costs less than an airport martini, and you'll likely regret it less a few hours later.
The article is content marketing, so I wouldn't be surprised if the pain points are being talked up somewhat (but who knows?)
Anecdotal evidence: timezone-aware precision might be only necessary for those pushing it to very edge of the allowances, but travel log spreadsheet was very very real for me, and everyone else in my own immigrant bubble. I still have it somewhere.
UK officials seem to operate on vibes though, not obsessive precision - I witnessed missed presence days being successfully propped up with a good sob story, but I can imagine it still being useful if you need to appeal a case where vibe turned against you.
Then was a short rest between making oath and Brexit, and here we are at that shit again - spreadsheet is back, and there's a script for Schengen rolling days.
“Vibes” sometimes work against you. This is a great app for documenting that you met the rules if you need to.
Back in 2000, entry to Canada was based on vibes. I had no idea what I was doing but looking back I don’t think they’d let someone in who forgets their DL, passport, and is on a “management consultant visa”.
Guessing it stems from "we need something dead-simple to evaluate that yields a definite yes-or-no answer, with no annoying variables."
I'm trying to think of some other reason they might want a specific moment rather than "pick your own instant within this span", but I can't think of anything. Even if it was to "make sure you aren't claiming the same time on two applications to different places", the person could have simply staggered the applications.
The other reason is more mundane. There's been a lot of political incentive to reduce immigration for a long time, which means adding arbitrary friction to increase the effort of applying and decrease the number of successful applicants.
Whether this is _effective_ is a different question, but certainly it's gotten a lot harder in recent decades, even pre-Brexit.
That explanation doesn’t seem to jive with the fact that post-COVID the UK has accepted millions of immigrants
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lol, that’s extra funny considering that the boat people can just appear and receive not only the de facto right to remain, but get free hotel rooms for years. Meanwhile productive people with useful skills are tortured with red tape.
My guess is that if you need to have been there for 5y, you need to have a way to tell when that 5y starts. I presume it only matters if you apply the day after 5y. When I applied I had been in the UK for over 10y, provided 10y worth of proof of address, and the issue never came up.
It's not even hard really, I did it lastyear. I book a visit to the city hall, they look into the address db and see when I registered the first time. I see exactlt the same thing myself when I login into the thing.
The official agrees with me on the appointment date to actually submit the application, that is after cutoff date.
I put a signature on one sheet of paper, pay a thousand and go my way. The thing takes 15 min tops.
But it's continental Europe, not UK
The point is not to produce a system where a software engineer can loophole the system. The point is to try to prevent people who aren't committed to the UK apply for citizenship.
Yes, but…
Convoluted rules like that smack of the ridiculous literacy tests for voting in the US during the Jim Crow era (if you don't know why the terms “grandfathering” and “grandfather clause” have fallen out of fashion in recent years, go have a poke around that bit of history which is where those terms originate).
Either that or it looks like a dysfunctional overly-complicated system like the mechanisms draw by Heath Robinson, which while better still isn't good. How many good (morally) and useful (i.e. to the economy) people are being rejected because of unnecessary complications like this?
It depends on where you're going and what you're doing.
A lot of this faff isn't relevant if you're not applying for any visas or citizenship. Which is most people, most of the time.
The obvious solution to most of these problems for most people is "don't cut it close to any of the limits". If you enjoy traveling a lot, that's definitely a problem, but most people don't cross borders often enough to run into this many corner cases.
This is only a small peek into the awful bureaucracy that will hit Europe if extreme right wing parties keep gaining popularity across the EU. The extra calculations Brexit imposes, but not for every country you travel through!
> A lot of this faff isn't relevant if you're not applying for any visas or citizenship. Which is most people, most of the time.
That’s true for many, but my passport isn’t very strong, so I still have to deal with a lot of paperwork for most transits.
If your job is travel, like you are an international truck driver or maybe aircrew, these kinds of things might affect you a lot sometimes.
There's probably special rules for those people in some places, which makes the situation even more complicated.
> To apply for British citizenship, you need to prove you were physically in the UK on your application date but five years ago.
I am confused whats British citizenship application to do with his, or any travel at all? That's not what you do regularly, I mean most people do not apply for citizenship in other countries ever in their lives? Or am I missing something?
He needs to plan travel very carefully in order to not accidentally undermine his citizenship application.
> I had no idea travel was this difficult for people who aren't EU citizens.
I traveled before and I traveled after Schengen and the only thing that changed was not having to wait a bit at border control. What the article describe concerns a very small number of people, and exist only because of cheap air travel and internet
Do you think applying on February 29 is allowed?
Note also that this isn't a travel requirement.
It’s just as difficult for EU citizens when traveling to most of the world.
I'll tell you a secret, UK gov has no clue where you were 5 years ago :-)
Right now the biggest problem in life is the country of my passport.
I have enough in savings and enough passive income to be able to live comfortably almost anywhere, but whenever I talk to travel agents, or people who can help set up companies etc in the countries I want to go to, first they're like "Sure, we can do it, when do you want it" etc and then they ask where I'm from, and when I tell them, they either stop replying or say sorry, they can't help me.
sigh...Racism is a funny thing. They haven't even seen me, or seen my history of travel, or anything, they just stop cooperating when they see that one word, the name of my country.
And I can't blame them either, I know many people from here go and overstay there visas and generally make problems in other countries.
I just wish I could put down a deposit of a few thousand dollars as a guarantee that I'll behave and get a visa.
Germany lets you get a Chancenkarte with a deposit of 1000EUR/month to look for a job upto a year.
This is actually standard for other countries too
But it is a ridculous requirement. Like having a millsecond-hand one a pendulum clock it appears to be to precise for the timeframe involved
Why not just make it a before-date if you care for someone having been here for a time? So just proof that you have been here X years ago or longer. Totally sufficient and much easier to have at hand.
But this is of course the point. It isn't policy where the state requires a certain thing and all people who fulfill the requirement have a shot. Instead the state makes the process of demonstrating the requirement hard on purpose as a means of reducing the people who get the benefit.
And this idea isn't just unique to the described process. It is everywhere. A bit of friction in certain places is placed there on purpose and it can also be a net positive for that friction to exist. But beyond a certain level it can turn people with rights into beggars.
Immigration laws and memos (aka office procedures) are usually opaque and ambigous by design. Be it for exploitable loopholes that benefit internal production, or whatever.
Speaking of the EU, in Italy specifically for example the naturalization is really opaque and there's no clear process deadlines. While you can submit after 10 years of residence in Italy, with additional documentation from your country of origin, the process of actually getting a reply (denied or approved) may take usualy 5+ years, for some people even a decade because the people that should work on the papers forget them above a desk under a pile of dust for years.
Immagine having only third-world-like country citizenship. It's a travel nightmare.
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