SanDiegogirl

If you don't mind me asking what is your current situation.

In 2015 you were asking about British passports for your Canadian children.

Earlier in 2016 you said that you were living in Ireland and going the SS route.

Did you get your EU Family permit? or have you not applied for it yet?

CJ2015

Hi SanDiegogirl, and
thanks for asking. We did the SS route; I applied twice and was refused twice. Part of the reason that they cited was that I was abusing the system and circumventing immigration rules.

We are in the UK on Irish RCs.

I see no point in applying for the UK RC if they have precluded that we do not qualify. They refuse to read my documentation showing that I have sold up and moved everything over to Ireland. There is none so deaf as he who does not want to hear...so again, I see no point to applying. We will stay for as long as we can.

formula

An RC given to a non-EEA citizen in one country, does not allow the holder to live in another EEA country.

formula

The highest court in the EU. the CJEU, had already assured EEA countries that their citizens could not use Singh to avoid their own immigratiion rules, this is why they have been able to refuse people. A non-EEA citizen challenged that ruling and lost. Now the new EEA Regulations make that clear for those trying to use the Singh route and that has a new genuine test.

Even if you had got an RC for the UK, there is still a Brexit looming and the UK have not said if they will put all the EU courts' rulings into UK law. Singh is an EU court ruling. The devil will be in the detail of the new repeal law.

Why don't you use the UK immigration rules? At least then you would know you are on a path to settlement and that a Brexit or any other crisis in the EU that brings in changes, won't affect you.

CJ2015

Many are, SanDiegogirl.

Thanks, formula, for this information. I had thought about that, but there is more at stake here than getting into the UK. Would going the regular route entail us leaving the UK again?

formula

I have just looked back on your posts and see that it is your children that don't have British citizenship and have Irish RCs. You are all Canadain citizens and you are British by descent.

Has Brit looked to see if your children can have British citizenship?

They can't be in the UK on Irish RCs as they only allow non-EEA citizens to reside in Ireland and are nothing to do with the UK. Were they stamped in as visitors to the UK on their Canadian passports? If they came in under EU rules, then they have a time limit there too if they don't have UK RCs. 6 months?? I'm not even sure what that allows them in the UK under EU rules?

To apply for UK visas for them, I think that has to be from a country they are resident of? From Canada would have been your best option, but I guess they can apply from RoI as they have Irish RCs????

Stand by for others to advise.

BritInParis

Your children can't live in the UK on Irish visas. If the Surinder Singh route is not available to you then you can either apply for settlement visas for your children or apply to register them as British citizens as previously discussed.

CJ2015

Thanks formula and BritinParis.

I know that there is a time limit that we can stay here with the Irish RCs (6 months) and Canadian passports.

And your advice back in 2015 was spot on, BritInParis. I see now that it was the best option. Hindsight! But we had other issues at play then that I needed to take into consideration.

Even if we get the settlement visas or UK passports, given the recent changes in UK immigration law, the political mood and will is moving in a specific direction. So, what is your general sense of where this current will lead to? More changes, retroactively, that will nullify the visas/citizenship in the UK?

Thanks for you/everyone's input.

BritInParis

As your children are already in the Common Travel Area then they can remain as visitors in the UK for up to six months but I would encourage you to make arrangements for their status to be sorted out as soon as possible.

Don't believe the hyperbole. Immigration to the UK is higher than it has ever been and successive governments from both sides of the political spectrum have shown zero appetite to take the steps necessary to seriously reduce immigration. If any changes were to be made to tighten things up then they wouldn't apply retroactively.

formula

ernmm did you miss all the yet more changes to the immigration rules that I posted last month? Or any of the previous changes that began in 2010?

Or all the changes for those trying to use EU rules? Not just the EEA regulation changes that I posted on here last month, but the ones before?

How about all the changes to what a qualified person is in the UK? Ones like this from 2014.
https://www.freemovement.org.uk/exis...using-benefit/
Or the 2010 major EEA changes to a QP?

Or the Immigration Act 2014? Or the changes to the NHS that means there is no more free NHS to everyone who is legally living in the UK from April 2015? Or the Immigration Act 2016 and all these changes, some in and some still to come in?

How about the MAC reports to the government and the changes the UK have made on the back of these reports? Some of these changes were also announced in the Autumn budget in 2015 and will come into force from April 2017.

The strange thing is that on all the other immigration forums, they moan about all these constant changes the UK makes that make it harder for immigrants, but at least they keep up to date to avoid any nasty surprises, i.e. such as these changes to the Singh route - and now that change is in and it's too late for those only just finding out.

BritInParis

All of which adds up to a heap of beans. It's little more than window dressing. Immigration to the UK remains at historical high levels and nothing you have mentioned will actually reduce immigration. There's certainly nothing to suggest the previous poster's children would be stripped of their citizenship or settlement status and deported to help with net migration figures and it's pure fantasy and scaremongering to suggest otherwise.

formula

It's the EU that is causing these high figures. Most of the UK visas that lead to settlement have been shut down or tightened from 2010 and work visas from outside the UK limited to just 20,700. The government list the numbers of immigrants by their citizenship and 1 EEA national could bring in 20 plus non-EEA citizens with them, or non-EEA citizens could use the various EU court rulings like Chen, Singh, etc. It's not easy to tell the exact numbers of those using EU routes. I suppose the UK would need to look at visa figures and subtract that number from the total number of immigrants per year, to get an idea of immigrants to the UK using the EU routes.


Who told CJ2015 that? I just looked back on this thread and can't find who said that. Was it on a previous thread? If her children don't hold British citizenship, then how can they be stripped of something they don't have? How strange.



I asked her if you had checked if her children could have British citizenship as CJ2015 is 'by descent'. From your post after mine, it seems you had. At least that is one way forward for her children now that UK RCs under Singh have been refused twice.

BritInParis

Non-EU immigration is consistently higher than EU immigration. Since most non-EU migration is students and family reunification the 20,700 cap on Tier 2 General visas doesn't make any meaningful difference. To the year ending March 2016 non-EU immigration to the UK was 282,000 versus 268,000 from the EU.

Go back up a few posts. CJ2015 suggested that given the febrile atmosphere towards immigration at the moment she was worried that the government might make changes that would affect her children's status retroactively. I told her this wasn't the case and not to believe the hype and you jumped on my comments to contradict me which made it sound like you did think it was a possibility, which of course it isn't.

formula

So you made it up that she had been told her children could be stripped of their British citizenship. That's why I said it was strange as they didn't have British citizenship yet to be stripped away. I don't even know if the UK would "strip" children of their British citizenship.

rebs

You are very much misinterpreting what Brit In Paris posted - it's perfectly clear how the conversation went along.