I did the math

Y'all, I am a sad sight to behold. I've just checked my email for the 47th time (no spouse visa yet), I'm sitting in my duckie boxer shorts, and eating breakfast at 6:00pm. My daily nail-biting is compounded by the fact that I'm unemployed and don't exactly have much to fill my day with. It's quite pathetic.

Anyways, my point is, I have A LOT of time on my hands.

A more ambitious person might go to the gym every day, do chores, or at least carry the dirty clothes pile blocking the door 3 feet to the hamper for which it was created. Not I!

Instead I have chosen to obsessively check American Expat message boards, make obnoxious posts on the UK Consulate in New York facebook page, and check processing time stats every 3 hours.

I have made an interesting calculation that pisses me off...

This is the current statistics for settlement visa processing times posted on the UK Border Agency website:

These stats are based on the month of March. That's 237 cases in one month. Sounds like a lot, right? Not really.

If there's 20 working days in a month. That's 11 cases in a day. REALLY?!
Come on now, you can surely do better than that. I assume theres more than one staff person assigned to this type of case. Even if there are two people, they should surely be able to make a decision on at least twice that amount.

Consider this.
It should take no more than 30 minutes to look at the supporting documentation and determine if this is clearly a legit couple or not. If yes, stamp APPROVE on it. If no, pass it along for a second opinion. So, in theory, one staff person could make a decision on 14 cases in one working day (I am being nice and giving them an hour for lunch). I would like to think they have more than one person working on this.

Ugh I am just making my brain hurt. At the end of the day, it doesn't make my case process any faster. Blergh.

Sorry y'all, I hope to make a more cheery post later.