JohnCoventry

Hi there

I'm planning to move back to the UK with my Brazilian wife in June 2015.
We married a long time ago and she previously had an ILR when we lived in London but we have to apply for a spouse visa because she's been out of the UK for too long (a lot more than 2 years).

Does anyone have any experience of how long the visa application takes from Brazil?
We're trying to work out when to apply and whether the premium service is worth it.

thanks!
John

BritInParis

https://www.gov.uk/visa-processing-times

JohnCoventry

Thanks. That's a general guideline, I was looking for real world recent experiences in visa applications.

HKG3

As your wife had ILR, in theory, she can apply for returning resident visa. Please see link below for details -

https://www.gov.uk/returning-resident-visa

However, the returning resident visa is very difficult to get.

Best of luck.

JohnCoventry

Thanks for the link.

We've looked into returning resident visa already. On the gov website it cites exceptional circumstances as being required. An immigration lawyer in London seems to think that she can use our children moving to the UK as exceptional circumstances, but wants to charge us £2500 for the fun of it.

We've read of so many bad experiences trying for the RR visa on these forums that we don't want to risk it. If it gets refused it'll be money thrown away and back to the spouse visa anyway.

We're assuming that the spouse visa is guaranteed since it's very easy to prove our continuing relationship and although I don't have a job lined up in the UK I have savings that exceed the financial requirements for spouse visa. Spouse will cost more and have to wait 5 years for naturalisation instead of 3, but we'd rather go guaranteed route than what seems to be the risky route of RR.

The lawyer actually suggested that she just wander in on her ILR. To be honest, we've been back at least once a year and she's always received an unlimited time entry stamp after showing her ILR, but with the anti-immigration sentiment in the UK at the moment we don't want to risk her being questioned on entry and being refused on the grounds of being non-UK resident for 12 years.