Good morning all,
It's my first time posting here & hoped i wouldn't need to but i've grown very frustrated with the IND.
I am a UK citizen who lives and works in the Netherlands. I brought my wife here In January 2019. My wife is from the UAE so Non-EU.
We applied for form 5005 'eu family reunification' in February 2019. This was accepted and confirmed by a letter from the IND in April 2019.
We were told on the letter we would receive a letter when we could collect the EU residence card.
We have never received either. I have called every single week, the IND have repeated the same excuse. "There is a problem with the external company manufacturing the card". They give nothing in writing, no resolvement date or anything.
This has now been nearly 9 months since we got the application accepted. This card is the crucuial for work and travel, especially as a non-EU citizen.
I have been in contact with SOLVIT for the last 5 months but they rarely email and just seem to repeat the same information the IND are giving.
I refuse to believe the simple task of generating an ID card can have already taken 9 months and with no end date in sight. It really is an important document for us.
Apparently it is a problem generating cards for 'certain' (arabic) nationalities. Not sure how it can be any more difficult than Others.
My question is, can i seek legal assistance? How do i push this forward? Is this normal?
I get the feeling this could drag on for years. It's already been nearly a year. This is literally just producing an ID card, It's really not difficult no matter how much the IND want to make it look this way.
Thanks in advance
Oliver
EU Family Visa Accepted Apr '19 - no EU Resi Card after 9 months
Hi and welcome to the Forum.
You're the first person who's mentioned this, so, unfortunately, I have no further empirical information I can provide.
The thing that puzzles me is that you can't be the only "'certain' (Arabic) nationalities" they have applications for, yet absolutely nothing in the Press or social media. Who told you about the "problem generating cards"? Could there be some other reason why you are getting fobbed off?
What can you do?
If you believe the IND is not acting in your interest then you can phone +31 (0)88 043 0470.
If you believe there is some fraudulent activity in how the IND is dealing with your case, then phone +31(0)88-043 6663.
You can always take legal advice, but it will always be at your cost; I just used Google and came up with several firms offering immigration law services, so my advice would be to do that. However, I don't think it's against the law to be incompetent, so it will be a case of you proving a detrimental outcome due to this lack of regulatory outcome.
Not sure how much I've helped, but I wish both you and your wife the best in this matter.
If you have any further specific questions, then please come back to us.
Cynic
Expat Team
Many thanks for your quick & detailed response!
I too am unsure of how my wifes nationality may cause a problem with card generating.
This information about the card manufacturing problem has come directly from both the IND and from SOLVIT (this is the reason SOLVIT cannot help further - they have said as it is due to technical reasons and not 'administration incompetency' that they cannot help on this basis.) I have confirmed with the IND via email today, that they have no further resolution as of yet.
I also do not understand how we can be the only case of this happening and there's no reason they'd try to avoid giving us the card.
We have the visa approved for 5 years on the basis of my full time employment here and me being an EU citizen, so there's no problems with anything on that side.
I too have looked at some of the lawyers and will contact some this weekend with a view to pursue in the new year, but not sure if it'll be any use, as like you say, it perhaps isn't even breaking the law anyway.
The number is for the IND, i have already sent in two formal complaints and i got lettered receipt of this, i never received a response from either. Therefore contacted the citizens advice bureau here, they had contacted me and contacted the IND to request they contact me - again, no contact.
Once again many thanks for your response.
Kind regards
Oliver
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