Settlement/ILR App: Dates In/Out of Country, IRIS Q

Hi everyone

Just took my Life in the UK test and passed and now I'm working on my Indefinite Leave to Remain application. There's one part where they want to know all my travel dates over the last five years. I travel A LOT. This is going to take me ages!

I can pull something together from passport stamps and Expedia and United's Web site, but what if I miss something? Just curious how heavy travelers have handled this part.

Also, I recently signed up for IRIS so my last few trips, I don't have any stamps. When I signed up for IRIS, the immigration officer told me that the machine will produce a receipt which I'm supposed to keep with my passport, but I haven't seen any receipts when I've used the machine, and there have always been people behind me so I feel like a bit of an idiot looking all around. So I suppose two Qs: what have you done with IRIS trips where you might not have passport stamps, and does anyone know where the IRIS receipts come out of the machine?

Thanks!
Krista

There's one part where they want to know all my travel dates over the last five years. I travel A LOT. This is going to take me ages! I can pull something together from passport stamps and Expedia and United's Web site, but what if I miss something? Just curious how heavy travelers have handled this part.

Wow, I didn't even know about this - SET(M) doesn't require it.  Which I'm grateful for, as I'd have as tough a time as you, I think!

Sorry, I don't know what they do if you miss something.  But here are some things I'd do if I needed to find travel dates, so maybe they'll be helpful:

- look at old calendars/diaries, which have entries like 'to France!!1!';
- check e-mail folders for e-mails from the airlines saying 'here's a reminder of your itinerary';
- go through Collections of Random Papers for a) printed itineraries and b) boarding passes;

[at this point I note that I probably sound mildly compulsive about keeping old documents...]

- look at your frequent flyer activity (and if it's only good for the past twelve months you might be cheeky and e-mail them to see if they could produce a full record of your account activity);
- if you do anything through a travel agent, ask them if they have your old itineraries on record;
- look at credit card/bank statements to see activity patterns - my US card gets heavily used when I'm overseas and my UK account activity pretty much halts until I get back;
- look at bank statements to remind yourself when you purchased foreign currency.

I had similar issues, but generally found that even if I didn't have a stamp from the UK, I at least had a stamp from the country I was visiting, on at least one leg.  Then it was just a matter of going through my Dopplr records (hurrah for being an early adopter of nerd toy websites), my email archives (hurrah for GMail which saves everything) looking for old e-tickets, and scanning my memory for any gaps (e.g. one trip to Switzerland which was pretty much completely undocumented, since I used IRIS in the UK and the Swiss never stamped my passport before they went into Schengen last December.)  I was also prepared to write to the admin assistant at my previous job, asking her for any records she still had of my work trips.  PtC's idea of scanning through old bank / credit card statements is also a very good one.

I have never got an IRIS receipt either.  I thought I remembered finding out that receipts are only given to non-residents who are registered, and I do think I've seen one that was issued to a frequently-travelling friend who lives in the US.

Oh, two more:

- your US tax returns - form 2555-EZ wants to know all the times you're back in the USA (obviously this is no good for non-US travel though).
- if you have an electronic financial system (Quicken or whatever), and keep separate accounts for pounds/dollars/Euros, that's a big help right there.

tla, I agree completely about the benefits of Gmail!