Traveller72

A posted this on another thread that was promptly closed as it was old. Any help here would be appreciated.

I am a British citizen married to a Thai National I have lived in Thailand with my wife and previously in the Netherlands, she has had several Schengen visitor visas the last being in 2017, I have been working in the UK and Netherlands since August 2018 and will be for the next few years at least so we applied for a settlement visa last year.

Application and docs received at Sheffield on the 23rd July 2018
Received no communication from UKVI since the 23rd July - Never received non standard email.
Escalated in November and received an email stating process ongoing and will be dealt with ASAP.
Involved MP who has contacted the HO and waiting for a response.
Currently 6 months and two weeks since docs received at Sheffield, Biometrics and English test carried out in May.
I can only think that because i have been out of the country myself although have always paid all my tax in uk and my Ltd company is a registered UK company (trading for 8 years with all books up to date ) and plenty of evidence of substantially higher earnings than required but I am not happy that the system seems to be discriminatory and the lack of communication received to understand why things are taking so much longer than the two months i was originally quoted. Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated.

Bingbing25

Sorry to hear about your situation. I know someone who works at the visa centre in Sheffield and according to them there're huge piles of applications filling the entire room. I know your situation must worry you, but I doubt it's anything to do with you specifically. They just have a dysfunctional system.

I read about applications prior to everything moving to Sheffield, and settlement visas only took a week or so to process in Manila.

Traveller72

Thank You - even a slight encouragement helps this agony of waiting without response. I am becoming so seriously disillusioned with the UK over this and other things that are occurring politically at the moment, I am proud of being British but ashamed at our current attitude to 'outsiders'.

BritInParis

Higher risk applications will take longer to assess. Nothing to do with xenophobia.

Traveller72

Brit in Paris

I accept that but why the lack of communication, I personally don't see my application as anything other than straight forward but would be prepared to accept it, if some form of communication was established, not just pay for the privilege of contacting them only to receive a stock reply without any substance. Is there any evidence other than anecdotal that the HO is not still creating a 'Hostile Environment' for immigration or is it purely incompetence. I would prefer the latter as to intentionally delay these visas and keep families apart and one partner at least without the ability to travel should be criminal or at the very least be subject to scrutiny and redress.
Who are the HO accountable to? Who will give me and my wife the time we have had to spend apart back ? Sorry to vent and maybe not a fair answer to the comment of BIP but I think holding someones passport for 7 months without explanation is just plain wrong.

spouse of scouse

I can understand your frustration. As someone who's been through the spouse visa process and has been a BE member for a long time, I don't think the issue is one of intentionally seeking to delay processing applications, nor one of incompetence of those who do the processing. Bringing processing of applications back onshore and insufficient staffing levels would be my guess. It's a shame that you didn't use the 'keep my passport' service, the fee of 2,650 allows you to keep your passport while your application is being processed.

Traveller72

To be fair I wasn't aware of a keep your passport option it just said surrender passport and get back in no less than 2 months. If we could have kept the passport then my wife could have got a Shengen Visa in a matter of days and at east been with me in the Netherlands whilst we waited. The genius of hindsight

spouse of scouse

Ah yes, the genius of hindsight - or research

Bingbing25

Other countries charge less - much less - and take more - but not always - to process the visa. When the fees are this high, in fact the highest in the world, they have no excuse for such poor service. If they're going to privatise the border, they should at least provide the service people paid for.

Does anyone know what was the reason for relocation of visa centres to Sheffield?

christmasoompa

It's still MUCH quicker than most other 'first world' countries, even if it is more expensive. Canada or the US it's a year or so for a spousal visa, although it's cheaper my guess is that most going through that process would rather pay more and have their visas in 3-6 months.

Traveller72

Oooh burn haha, fair enough but I did do a lot of research in various forums, not this one to be fair but many google searches and im using a company to ensure i got all the docs correct no one mentioned a keep your passport option.

Bingbing25

Yes, but in Canada, you can wait for it INSIDE the country. I don't know if you can do that in America, but both grant permanent residency with the first application, so the longer waiting time is more justified.

christmasoompa

You can try and enter as a visitor once an application has been submitted, could maybe go backwards and forwards a couple of times during the year's processing time, but can you not do the same with the UK?

Bingbing25

You can even work whilst waiting for your spouse permanent residence permit to be issued in Canada, which makes it unnecessary to go back and forth. (Not as a visitor, but if you apply for a work permit, which you can get as spouse of Canadian citizen.)

christmasoompa

You can get a work permit (although that takes 5 months, so longer than most UK apps by quite some way), but you have to be in Canada in the first place to be able to apply there. You can't submit an inland application if you're living abroad, so it's great for those already in Canada on work permits etc, but not for somebody living outside Canada. Dual intent only applies once an application is submitted.

I know nothing about UK immigration (having worked in Canadian immigration for years and being a Brit married to a Brit, it's not really something I've ever needed to know about), which is why I asked if you can't just do the same with a UK app i.e. visit whilst it's being processed. And if you're already in the UK on a work permit or similar, can you apply from there? So essentially the same other than quicker processing times and a higher fee?