Chinese visa in UK for Australians?

[ziggymeow]

 I have already been living in China for almost 3 years and have had the appropriate visa's in this time.

During the Chinese New year Festival I will be required to get a new visa.. I will be visiting the United Kingdom during this holiday period while also intending to do my visa application there.

So, this is the part that I'm slightly confused about

//1.Basic documents

(4) Proof of legal status (applicable for those not applying for the visa in their country of citizenship)

If you are not applying for a visa in the country of your citizenship, you must provide the original and photocopy of your valid certificates of residence, employment or student status, or other valid certificates of legal stay provided by the relevant authorities of the country where the Visa Centre is located.////

The reason this confuses me, is that I am English by birth, but as a teenager I moved to Australia with my mother. I gained
Dual British-Australian Nationality and an Australian Passport. I'm still dual nationality but since moving to Australia I had lost my expired English passport and not applied for a new one. My Australian passport shows my place of birth is BATH UK and I still have my birth certificate which says where I was born.

So under these circumstances, am I required to show 'proof of legal status' or not? and if so, what could I provide as proof, considering that I will only be there for 3 weeks. My father , who I will be staying with, still resides in the UK so it would not be a problem to use his address as a residence


Please help me on this issue , its quite urgent!
Thank you

Ziggy

[roddy]

I'd assume that as you don't need a visa for the UK, your legal status is demonstrated by your Australian passport - which you'll obviously be handing over anyway. That's my best guess anyway, anyone else got any better info?

[adrianlondon]

I don't think it's that simple.  The visa agency will require proof that you are a resident of the UK. An Australian passport won't cut it; you can certainly visit the UK visa-free with an Australian passport but not live there with one.

 

For example, I now live in Switzerland but have a British passport.  When I got my China visa (in Bern) I had to take my British passport (obviously - that's where the visa goes) and also my Swiss residency permit proving I'm not just visiting here but actually live here.

 

They're trying to stop people from getting visas in countries they're just visiting.  I don't actually know why, but if they keep up with this it'll also eventuallyu stop the HK visa runs I guess (although the agencies there seem to bypass this check anyway).

[roddy]

How did this work out, Ziggy?