Confusion about Immigration Service Desk

International students say that the Immigration Service Desk (ISD) isn’t very helpful. And thanks to renovations in the Academy Building, many of them can’t even find it when they do manage to get an appointment.
By Edward Szekeres

Yujia Yang, a journalism student from China, was required to undergo a tuberculosis test upon her arrival in the Netherlands. ‘I sent several emails to the ISD in my first week in the country asking for help arranging my test. They have not gotten back to me at all, so I had to set everything up by myself’, says Yujia.

Her complaint echoes those of many other internationals who find the ISD less than helpful. ‘The ISD was supposed to help me get my visa and residence permit card – at least, that’s what I was told by the university’, says Melis, an art history pre-master’s student from Turkey. ‘But in fact, they did not help. I ended up solving the issue with the Dutch Immigration Services instead.’

Even the most proactive of international students might struggle to get the help they need, simply because the ISD is hard to find. Thanks to renovations in the Academy Building, ISD employees now work out of the Studium Generale building on Oude Boteringestraat. The ISD’s ‘office’ is actually just a lone computer perched at the very edge of what is otherwise the Admissions Office desk.

Makeshift

The makeshift location only adds to student confusion. ‘Everybody is quite confused as to what desk or department they should go to’, says an Admissions Office employee who shares desk real estate with the ISD. Students get annoyed when she can’t answer their questions – they don’t understand that she isn’t an ISD employee.

‘With various offices currently being scattered all over the place, people really need to pay attention to instructions and locations posted online’, she sighs.

But sometimes, students just want to talk to real person. ISD doesn’t make that easy. ‘It takes a long time for them to reply to emails and it does not seem like they have enough people at their desk,” says a clinical neuropsychology student from the US.

Specific reasons

To book an appointment online, she first had to choose from a long list of specific reasons, none of which applied to her. She tried calling and emailing, ‘but they never seem to reply in the afternoons.’

And because the ISD is only open between 10 a.m. and noon on working days, students often have to get on waiting lists for appointments. They can wait for up to 10 days just to talk with someone.

University spokesperson Jorien Bakker says the university is aware of this problem. ‘The desk is always very busy, so we are looking into solutions to do something about the extensive waiting times. But for the next several weeks, the situation will stay as it is.’

Students may also be confused about a recent name change: though the ISD is usually referred to as the ‘International Service Desk’, it now officially stands for ‘Immigration Service Desk’.  The ‘new’ ISD continues to facilitate visa and residence permit applications, but now provides practical information about daily life as well: housing, medical care, insurance, and so on.

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