u/MsiSiJapan

Will try to be as concise as possible and appreciate the help since home office have set a deadline of June 8th otherwise will reject the application and forfeit the fee.

I am British with a British Passport and born in the UK but now live in Japan since 4 years ago. My wife is Japanese. My son who is 6 and born in Cambridge UK with me easily got his British Passport.

But my daughter who is 3 and born in Japan, needs a document from paternal grandparents to show they held indefinite leave to enter or remain in UK at the time of my birth day in Cambridge UK in 1988.

My dad has been in the UK for 47 years, having been accepted into the UK in October 1979 as a Vietnamese Refugee (boat people) with the help of the Save the Children Organisation headed by Princess Anne to escape from the Vietnam war.

Problem is no document exists. His whole family were first sent to a refugee camp in Hong Kong, then moved to Kettering initially when moved to the UK. He was then offered housing in Cambridge and been there ever since. The only thing they got given were National Insurance numbers

My mum met my dad in the UK and got naturalised and both have British passports. Unfortunately due to the eligibility period, they both got naturalised and have the certificate and their passport after my birth in 1988. We sent his National Insurance Number which he received on the first week he arrived in the UK in 1979, his naturalisation certificate and his marriage certificate but they want indefinite leave to enter or remain in UK at the time of my birth day in Cambridge UK in 1988.

We applied to the Home Office Subject Access Request for any documents to help us but they emailed back saying they do not hold records prior to 1986.

They pointed us to the National Archive for anything prior to 1986 but also said National Archive do not hold records of grants of citizenship between June 1969 and September 1986 which are no longer available. I did a search for his name and it did not show up, but we do have the option of official application of search so we are trying that but need to wait.

Any ideas what we can do or who we can go to?
Thanks

I've been doing Youtube for 3 years and have 2 very successful channels, 2 growth channels and 1 semi dead channel all in different niches.

I think I have cracked a formula within the algorithm that works for me and am happy to share in case it helps anyone and to also get feedback on anyone else who has experienced similar or has advice on taking the next step.

It doesn't matter if you have 100k subs on 1 channel or 100k subs on 5 channels. What matters is the average views you get per month as a total and the RPM equivalent in cash you earn and how alive the channels actually are i.e views per 60 mins and views per 48 hours.

Kids Channel - My best one

My most successful channel is a Japanese Kids channel with content around the latest kids trending series like Italian Brainrot, Sprunki and Tamagotchis etc. The most beautiful things about this niche is by design, all videos are evergreen so whilst kids content earns less revenue, they count as repeat revenue basically forever and videos that go into the algorithm generate daily income like an actual job and not a one off.

The channel is truly alive with about 25k views per 60 mins between both short and long form and kids actually watch videos over and over again which means retention alot of the time is above 100%! The channel is well and truly alive and is making about 90,000 yen a month which is about £400.

What really got the channel alive and growing with momentum is to stop posting random crap since I have at least 200 videos I want to make, but actually write them out on the ideation and validation platform to get peer reviews and help me convince myself that I should make a certain video over a different one. All ideas are not equal and you should certainly prove to yourself that you should commit the time to record and edit and do a video over the others ones you have in mind.

I found that there is definitely a turning point where 1 video in a particular topic in a particular time frame like a 20+ min video where if it is an outlayer and does exponentially well, it somehow proves to the Youtube Alorithm that you deserve to get views on that topic in that kind of length of video.

I.e Any videos I make on Sprunki's that is over 20 mins long is guaranteed to get over 1000 views with no cap, as 1 video is nearing a million views on long form and is pulling everything else up.

However, for any other topic like paw Patrol or Meru chan, I believe I have not been qualified by Youtube to deliver those topics to a wider audience yet, especially in a 10 min video time span which is saturated, so until you break through in a topic and a time frame, you cannot hit the big numbers.

It's a catch 22 because how can you get those big numbers if Youtube doesn't push it in the first instance? The only thing you can control is the quality of your video and your persistence to brute force it until you succeed in 1 topic, then go ham on it.

Football Channel on Liverpool - Most Paying Monthly Members

I have a Liverpool FC channel. I just released a video that got 1 out 10 rankings by view and I realised that through the ideation and validation platform and getting peers like Andy Cantwell, Leos goals and Alex Malone who are other prominent Liverpool content creators, that the ideas we all agreed would go big, nearly always went big as long as I met the criteria where my other videos had been qualified, like 20+ mins and on tactics in particular.

Anytime I try to do a video below 20 mins, the view cap is lower because that area is more saturated and I have not convinced Youtube mine is worthy over others it seems.

I can prove this because over 100 videos on my excel sheet, most that are about tactics and over 20 mins long, usually get about 2000-5000 views whereas anything on tactics and below 20 mins gets 1000-2000 with anything below 20 and NOT on tactics gets junked to 500 - 1500.

There also is a knock on effect on my channel when a video does well, that the next video gets a larger impression count by default but thats a different metric.

Either way, this type of channel is gold because its literally a talking head without a script, just an idea and why the idea will work, validated by my peers and some fellow aspiring youtubers I chat to regularly, football is permanently trendy with a huge fan base and hot topics daily from transfer rumours, results, manager changes etc so unlimited amount of ideation possible.

Even the 107 paying monthly members alone make it worthwhile, not counting the ad revenue, where I only need 1 hour a day to make a video that is likely to hit between 2000-5000 views on long form only. Lesson is that time spent does not have any relation to views. Entertainment, quality of delivery and giving the loyal fan base you built up, the analysis and information they want, in your own style, creates a brand, that no fancy editing will ever cover.

Life in Japan, Anime Figures, Weeby Goods

This was my first Youtube channel and is pretty dead. I covered too many niches like VLOGS, gameshows, unboxing and reviews, top 10's etc and then used it as an experimental playground to try ads and all sorts of social media funnels. However, I have a pretty good idea that despite it being in some sort of death spiral, if I ideate and validate as before and peer review with people like kenken and exkurogane and retrain this channel focusing on 1 specific thing, in a qualified time span, Youtube may recategorise it and revitalise it which means all past content has a chance to get bumped up and get a 2nd life, albeit only the ones related to the focused niche.

But then again, it may not and sometimes a new channel may have been a better approach but I will give it a shot to prove if you can revive an old broken channel.

2 Growth Channels

One is on my favourite ever game series, Suikoden, which has a mobile game coming out called Star Leap, so I want to see if doing regular content for a diehard but under served community, carves out its own little productive fandom and the other is a Youtube advice channel really sharing this kind of actual and factual detail from my own experience showing youtube studio transparently, which is something most of those Youtube gurus are afraid to do. I feel like they give generic advice and repeat each other whilst they have actually failed to ever grow a proper Youtube channel on a proper topic that was not about telling others how to grow a Youtube channel if that makes sense!

Hope you found it interesting. I have so much more I want to share but already think this post is too long! Always happy to chat to other aspiring Youtubers.