A Decision Delivered to the Wrong Address: How We Restored a Student’s Legal Stay After Three Years
Many foreign students apply for a temporary residence permit on their own. Usually that works. Sometimes, though, a single procedural error can leave someone in limbo for years. This is the story of one of our clients.
The application
Our client, a foreign student in Poland, applied on his own for his second temporary residence permit based on his studies. He submitted the documents, attended the appointment, and waited.
Whenever he contacted the office, he was told the same thing: the case was in progress and he had to wait. Months passed, then years.
“The decision has already been issued”
After a long time, he learned that a decision had been issued in his case. Yet nothing had arrived for him by post. No letter, no notification, nothing.
Worried, he hired several lawyers one after another. Some reviewed the case files, but none of them found a way forward. By the time he contacted us, almost three years had passed since his application.
What the case files revealed
Once he signed a power of attorney for us, we reviewed the file in detail and found the source of the problem. The decision had not been sent to him. It had been delivered to an agency he did not know and had never authorised to represent him. That agency even filed an appeal on his behalf. Because it had no valid power of attorney, the appeal was left without consideration.
So the decision was formally considered “delivered,” and the case seemed closed. Our client had no idea any of this had happened.
Why this matters legally
Under Polish administrative procedure, a decision must be delivered to the party or to their duly authorised representative. Delivery to someone without a power of attorney is not valid delivery. In practice, the decision had never been properly delivered to our client. That meant the deadline for his appeal had never started to run.
What we did
We filed a new appeal on our client’s behalf. In it, we explained to the authority that the first-instance decision had never been properly delivered to him, so his appeal was filed on time and had to be examined on its merits.
The result
About four months later, the Head of the Office for Foreigners (Szef Urzędu do Spraw Cudzoziemców) issued a positive decision in our client’s favour. After three years of uncertainty, his residence in Poland was legal again.
What can you learn from this case?
Waiting with no news is a warning sign. If your case has been pending for a long time, it’s worth reviewing the files rather than relying only on phone answers.
Check who has your power of attorney. Never sign documents for agencies or intermediaries you don’t fully trust, and keep copies of everything you sign.
“The case is closed” doesn’t always mean the end. Procedural errors, such as improper delivery, can reopen paths that seemed closed.
The details in the files matter. In this case, the solution was in a single document about who received the decision.
Is your residence case stuck?
If you’ve been waiting a long time for a decision, or you suspect something went wrong in your proceedings, book a consultation. We’ll review your situation and tell you what can be done.
