My girlfriend is due to finish her masters in May this year with her visa expiring in June. We won’t have been living together for 2 years or been in a relationship for two years by then, which seems to be the minimum requirements. I do earn over the £18k and she is fluent in English.

Any other routes as the media would have you believe we accept anyone!!?

She would definitely have European ancestry, which might be useful. Do we give jobs to people with certain skills?

tails – Member
My girlfriend is due to finish her masters in May this year with her visa expiring in June. We won’t have been living together for 2 years or been in a relationship for two years by then, which seems to be the minimum requirements. I do earn over the £18k and she is fluent in English.

I think you might need more than £18K/pa if I can remember.

Any other routes as the media would have you believe we accept anyone!!?

Try this forum. Very helpful.

http://www.immigrationboards.com/

Yes, don’t believe in everything the media says as the reality might be very different as individual case differs.

She would definitely have European ancestry, which might be useful. Do we give jobs to people with certain skills?

Yes, we still give jobs to people with certain skills provided the employer wants to sponsor them/her. She should try to apply for passport of EU ancestry then she is free to join you.

UK Visas and Immigration formerly UK Border Agency are crap. As a country now we have some really strict criteria for Visa’s. Firstly they will lose all the documents, then they will take forever to process the visa, then the officials might just reject it because they had a bad day.

My Friend just went to live in the US with his fiance because it was not worth trying to get her a UK visa.

fr0sty125 – Member
My Friend just went to live in the US with his fiance because it was not worth trying to get her a UK visa.

That is a better option but if they intend to come back to UK then they need to start preparing all supporting documents to proof they have the rights to stay or apply to stay.

You need to tick all the boxes with supporting documents. If you can comply with all of them then the applications should be smooth, but before you do so you need to read all the rules because hidden in them are the implied terms that you need to comply as well.

Most of the people who decide the case would prefer to have “simple” case rather than all the hassles. One slight mistake from the applicant(s) would mean application delay or worst case scenario the entire application rejected or returned to the sender. Then you are out of time which means you have to get out with/without the rights to appeal.

😮

yeh done one for my Russian wife to come live in the UK last year, but of a PITA but got it done successfully in the end. It was hard to find one single source for all the required documents.

ploeb – Member
yeh done one for my Russian wife to come live in the UK last year, but of a PITA but got it done successfully in the end. It was hard to find one single source for all the required documents.

There is no single source for all the required documents because they are all interlinked so you need go through a lot of them before applying otherwise you will fall fault of the rules.

My view is that it would be too inflexible or cumbersome for Border Agency to have all documents in one place (they expect you to search for them yourself) because all the rules are related. Although I feel that Border Agency needs the leeway it is when the case is misinterpreted either due to inexperience or simple misinterpretation that causes the problem. It is the chance that you take and as usual if the person processing your documents is not in a good mood or overlooked some documentation you risk being rejected.

Not that this’ll help, but getting my wife a visa was a piece of cake. Married on Saturday, went to consulate in Chicago on Tuesday with marriage cert, flew out on Wednesday with visa!

molgrips – Member

Not that this’ll help, but getting my wife a visa was a piece of cake. Married on Saturday, went to consulate in Chicago on Tuesday with marriage cert, flew out on Wednesday with visa!

Yes, provided you got all the supporting documents, ticked all the boxes and applying from abroad. 😀

I guess I just have to order a bride from EU in future coz I think my income may not tick the correct box. 😯

Ploeb

Do you mind if I ask a few questions about it?

Do you have an email?

Thanks

sure, send me a DM, I think you can do that on this thing?

ploeb, can’t see a way of doing that

could you send me an email, my email address is in my profile

thanks

My nephew’s Chinese girlfriend was refused a visa so they went to live in China and got married, once they had been together 2 years they returned to the UK.

Call me old fashioned OP but what from you describe of your relationship with your girlfriend I would say that doesn’t qualify as a “spouse” as far as I understand the term.

No I don’t think we do qualify in the normal way. It forces people to get married, move out of Europe or break up. As much as I like Brazil I’m not sure I want to live there with the current government.

We got married because we needed to for the visa. We would have anyway, but probably somewhat later! Fortunately there was no doubt for us.

Thanks for the help anyway, with luck she’ll be offered a working visa through Cambs uni