hey guys the UK Visa process is changing which is kind of terrifying but here is everything you need to know if you are like me I am living in the UK on a UK visa and I have a Biometrics residence permit a BRP all Visa holders will have this card it kind of looks like a little photo ID a little driver's license kind of vibe and it has all of your Visa details on it your expiry what you're allowed to do what you're not allowed to do your little photo everything and you use this BRP when you're applying for jobs when you're applying to rent a house um at Customs it basically proves that you're allowed to be in the UK however the UK government is getting rid of this card and instead of having a physical card they are doing an electronic service called a EV Visa so by December 31st 2024 all brps will expire but that doesn't mean your Visa will expire the home office has all of your details right they've got all of your Visa details they've got all of your personal details however they want you to register for the E Visa now I've just completed my e Visa I messed up I could not figure out for the life of me what I was doing wrong but I figured it out so I want to show you guys from start to finish how to apply for this e Visa which is required you must register for it before you're BRP expires and all of our brps expire together now first up you cannot register for the E Visa until the home office emails you so um if you haven't gotten the email yet you can certainly watch this video so you know what you're going to do but you can't actually do the process until you have been emailed now what will you need well this process asks you things like your date of birth your BRP number your passport if you don't have a BRP access to an email and a phone number and access to a smartphone part of the process has to be done on a smartphone which is very interesting so you absolutely have to have one or at least use somebody else's also a heads up you are required to take a picture of yourself a selfie and submit it on behalf of your sort of like details and this photo is used It's associated with your profile which I did not realize so when I did this process I just woken up I was in my pajamas my eyes were crusty and it was like okay now it's time to take a photo I didn't know so just a fair warning if you want to perhaps make yourself a little bit more presentable this photo is actually used and you will see this photo associated with your Eva so just a heads up all in all it took me about 15 minutes I did mess up which I will show you how I did that in a second I would definitely recommend doing this process start to finish don't do part of it and come back to it later it's too confusing so step one you're going to get a email from the home office and in that email it's going to say you need to create a ukvi account to access your EV visa and there will be a link so you want to click the link and start following the prompts so a lot of the questions are pretty straightforward just take your time when answering them you don't want to make a mistake and then submit because fixing a mistake after submitting it is very difficult have you ever had a biometric residence permit yes do you still have your BRP yes is your BRP still valid yes if you are like me you have your BRP card it's going to expire in December you're going to do this process before it expires so you don't cause yourself any extra headaches so you still have your card and it's still valid so then it says great now you can create an account wonderful who are you creating this account for me what is your name wonderful easy what is your country of nationality now these some of these are actually drop downs it doesn't look like it but you start typing like Canada and then it comes up and you can select it so you don't have to worry about like formatting it wrong or maybe it just wants the country code some of these are actually drop downs what identity document are you using now pause this is kind of where I went off the rails I thought it would be more beneficial to register for the service using my passport because my passport I'm going to have for so much longer than this BRP that's going to expire so I thought okay great I clicked my passport I went through all of these prompts um and at the very end it said ooh we can't do that and actually the end screen kind of looks broken it said passport you cannot use your passport passport passport like it looked like the page was broken but it did say no you can't do that so I don't know as a Canadian passport holder I'm not allowed to use it whatever I said okay forget it I go back and I try to do the system again this is where I actually messed up there is a page on this process thing that says sign in or sign up of course we need to sign up first right but I wasn't paying attention I just woken up and I went sign in and it asks you similar questions and then I get to the end and it says o those um details don't match our records and I'm thinking what so I do it again and I do it again and I couldn't figure out why these numbers weren't working and then I realized I had clicked on sign in and not sign up so for whatever reason if early on in this process you click away or you mess up or whatever go back to the email that you got from the home office use that link and pay attention because you need to sign up before you can sign in honestly this took me a long time to figure out what I was doing wrong so avoid my mistakes all right anyway I got back to this point I finally figured it out I used my BRP instead of the passport do you want someone else to have access to your account I said no but obviously it's up to you now there are a couple of points where it stops and it lets you check your answers do check them make sure all the numbers are correct cuz again once you submit it then being able to change it it's really messy the home office does not make things easy so let's do it right the first time next up they will send you an email so you're going to get an email to the email address that you used on this account um and then you're going to follow another prompt so at this point essentially we've made an account but it's not linked with our Visa yet or our identity yet so what I did was I signed in now I could sign in so for the signin prompts it's going to ask you your BRP number um it's going to ask you how you want to receive your code a text or an email or whatever and then you're able to sign in but when you sign in there's not your Visa there yet cuz you haven't gotten that far in the process so the next part of this process is actually switching over to your smartphone so I signed in and there is nothing there I thought okay what am I supposed to do now and then I gave it a second I think I refreshed it or I signed back out and I went back in and then it said oh by the way you need to download the UK immigration ID check app so you can just search it on your mobile um it's in the like app store and you'll see that it it is released by the home office that is the actual one when I did it it has one and a half Stars so so I went ahead and I down downloaded that cuz I was like okay like let's get going and then when I refreshed my login to the EV visa on the desktop it gave me a QR code so it did update and it's like hey download the app here's the QR code the app's whole purpose is a way to verify who's actually making this account and taking your photo and that kind of stuff so you'll have a couple of screens at the beginning just saying like what's going to happen um what you're going to be doing that sort of thing so it's going to ask you for details on your BRP and then it actually asks you to scan it like take little photos of it it takes photos of it but you line up your card on a brightly lit table or Surface and you hover over it and the app takes photos of it so it'll do that for both the front and the back just follow the prompts it's actually pretty straightforward then it also scans it which is pretty cool I didn't realize that there's a little chip in the brps kind of like a passport so again you have your your BRP flat you put your phone on top of it and it scans it how fun then you're going to scan your face so this is not the photo part this is just like a weird thing where you hold your phone like quite close up to your face and then it flashes a bunch of different colors and then that's it so after they scan your face with the flashing lights it says right now it's time to take a photo um and like I mentioned I was disgusting so I put my phone down I washed my face as quickly as possible this photo is used and when you log in to view your EV Visa that is the picture that comes up so do with that information what you will it tells you very specifically how the photo needs to be framed so there needs to be like clear image of yourself not too many Shadows um nothing behind you so find like a clear wall I had my partner take it in front of one of our blank um hallways like there's nothing on the the wall it was fairly bright I didn't smile because the photo references didn't smile but it didn't I don't think it actually says you can't smile I just took it like a really ugly passport photo so then the app gives you the option of going back to like where you were doing the application on a desktop or on a laptop or continuing it with your phone humble opinion just continue with your phone signing in and out of this process is kind of annoying so just stay with your phone you probably we only have a couple minutes left anyway now whether you continue on your phone or you want to go back onto the desktop the next part of this whole process are these three steps and you have to do them in order they only unlock as you like make your way through them so identity and contact we have confirmed our identity taking the photo doing the F the scan of your face that is completed so the next section is contact preferences it basically just asks you what's your phone number what's your email it doesn't have to be the phone number and email that you used previously it could be a different one but they need to be able to contact you somehow next it's account security so you are going to get three sets of questions um you have to pick one question from each Set uh to provide extra security for your account so questions like what is the name of the first school you went to what is the name of the city or town you were born in which city or town was your father born in very straightforward pick one question from each fill in your answers and hit save so that is account security questions done finally we have submit request so the Declaration is basically I mean you filled out a Visa before right you have a BRP already the Declaration is basically one of those where yes I've submitted all the the information as best of my ability I haven't lied you know I've been truthful and all that kind of stuff so all of these extra little categories are completed the next thing is just hit submit your information has been submitted so I completed this on a Tuesday morning I got an email from the home office Wednesday afternoon that my Visa my e Visa was ready to view so once you submit finish leave the service wait you'll get that email for me it was 24 hours and then you can sign in using the information you provided when you created your account um you can sign in and then you can see your e visa and I definitely would recommend signing in and checking it first off you're going to see that photo that you took mine was not very good but you're also going to see you all your personal details all the things that you can do on your Visa all the things you cannot do when your Visa expires what route or VISA pathway you're on like every detail is obviously way more in depth than your little card and then at least you can't lose it either but I would recommend checking to make sure all the details of your personal stuff on your EV Visa is correct and then you're good to go so at this point I'm not really sure what will happen in the future when you apply for a Visa after the brps are done and dusted obviously that will no longer be part of the process but perhaps the home office registers for an e Visa or you do I'm not really sure but moving forward we will no longer use the brps we will only use this online service which honestly it's kind of a pain to sign in but I would much prefer an electronic service rather than having that little card I'm forgetting that card everywhere I'm misplacing it you travel without it and then you forget to bring it it's like just a mess so I don't know about you but I have a Visa coming up in 2025 so that'll be my first Visa without a BRP so I'll be interesting to see how that process is different and I will let you guys know how it goes if you have any questions please leave a comment down below definitely check out this video I answer the most commonly asked questions I get as an expat in the UK but until then I'll see you in the next one [Music]