A Brit who fled war-torn Ukraine with his Ukrainian girlfriend has called on the government to make urgent changes to the visa application process – as thousands wait to discover if they will be let in.
The Home Office has faced widespread criticism after revealing yesterday only 300 Ukrainians – just 3 per cent of the 8,900 who have applied – have been granted visas since the rules were relaxed on Friday.
Liverpudlian Peter Cribley, 33, experienced first-hand the difficulties in wading through the red tape before his girlfriend, Katia, 24, was given permission to return to the UK with him.
The couple, who are both in Hungary after fleeing the invasion, spent several days filling out forms and negotiating with staff at visa centres before she was finally granted entry.
Peter began the application process while still in Ukraine and revealed they encountered some staff at the visa centre in Budapest who couldn’t speak Ukrainian and that the application forms required advanced English.
He said: “It’s tipping away from incompetence into malice.
“It’s not sustainable, these people are living on the streets, and these numbers of people are going up and up and up.
“When it came to actually directing people where to fill in their application, they couldn’t, not correctly.
“I was thinking, there was a remote chance that I was going to die in a bunker on the phone to UK visa immigration.”
Peter believes a full waiver of immigration requirements – similar to what the EU has opted for – is the only way to help the increasing numbers of Ukrainian refugees.
He added: “They didn’t come out with a consistent or credible plan to begin with. I believe it should have been a full waiver.”
Peter says he hopes to return to England with Katia later this week.
In response to the criticism, the Home Office tweeted on Monday: “We have surged staff and increased the number of appointments at our Visa Application Centres in Rzeszow, Warsaw, Bucharest, Budapest, Chisinau and Prague to process visa applications as quickly as possible.”
