Spouse visa application from New Zealand - my experience
Apr 16th 2019, 1:19 am
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Spouse visa application from New Zealand - my experience
I've just this week received my passport back with the visa approved so riding a bit of a high!!
Its been a stressful wait for this and now having this visa, i am just so stoked and have used this forum as a very useful reference and these types of posts were very useful so wanted to provide the same for other people:
I applied from New Zealand, my wife is in New Zealand with me also and we are moving across together for her to work. We had to submit proof of income for NZ work for the past 12 months and submit a letter from her UK employer (NHS) to confirm that she had a job that was starting in August.
The process for application was super confusing and there was seemingly alot of conflicting information and no central repository of it all but our application consisted of:
1. Priority payment receipt
Copy of picture page of my passport
2. NHS Surcharge payment receipt
3. Visa4UK application payment receipt
4. Contents page
5. Applicants documents
a) Printed Visa4UK application
b) VAF4A Appendix 2 filled out by hand
c) Copy of applicants passport picture page
d) A4 photocopies of current and previous applicants passports.
6. Sponsor's Financial documents
a) Letter of confirmation of job with NHS
b) Letter of confirmation of current job in NZ
c) Letter of confirmation of current earnings in NZ job
d) 12 months of payslips signed by her current NZ employer
e) 12 months of bank statements confirming deposit of pay from payslips into her bank account (we missed the final pay that was 3 days prior to the date of application and they came back and asked for us to submit this)
7. Proof of accommodation documents:
a) Letter from my partners parents confirming accommodation
b) Council tax bill for the accommodation
c) copy of register of title for accommodation
d) copy of contract exchange confirmation for accommodation
e) council tax bill for her parents as proof of primary residence
8. Sponsor's non-financial documents
a) Copy of sponsor's passport biometric page
b) Sponsor's letter of confirmation of support
9 Relationship documents
a) Applicant letter of confirmation of relationship
b) Marriage certificate (original)
c) 14 photo's throughout the 3 year relationship with captions for date/location
d) joint account bank statements
e) Birthday cards from previous 3 year's
f) Chat record excerpts from when we first started dating 3 years ago.
And a summary of the things that we found confusing/difficult throughout the application process:
1. Sending a self addressed envelope from NZ to Sheffield is basically impossible. We tried but found out that we could only do this through UPS at a huge cost (I think it was 250NZD each way). We ended up getting in touch with someone else who had done something like that and the Sheffield office came back to them and said that they needed the return addressed envelope to be to a UK address. We then went to the royal mail website and purchased a label that you then print off and affix to the return envelope. It does have an expiry date for delivery but it seems to have been ignored We sent the documents back to my partners parents place and they arrived about a week after sheffield received them.
2. It was quite confusing as to which application form to actually use - there is the new one that is for certain types of visas (not settlement visas). The one for settlement visas as of March 2019 is the Visa4UK website.
3. The information is pretty confusing and we found it easier to go through word by word the immigration rules as it was much clearer than the guidance documents that they seem to have spread all across the gov.co.uk website. The rules that we found were on the gov.uk website - search for "immigration rules" and "Chapter 08". Read everything thoroughly and take notes if you need to...
4. Just an aside to all this - in the process, we found out that civil unions in the UK only apply to same sex partnerships... late 2018 there was a case that went through the high court that allowed the first mixed sex civil partnership. It is changing in UK legislation but just be aware that there may be a fight to get it recognised in the UK until the legislation is pushed through (expected this year but who really knows...)
5. It is expensive. We expected it to be expensive and had saved for it but it still hurts forking across 6500NZD for the opportunity to live with my wife in her home country...
Happy to answer any specific questions that anyone has on the above... I know how stressful it is (I do paperwork for a living, my first language is English and I am pretty good at negotiating bureaucracy but this process was far harder than i had ever expected it to be). I really respect anyone who has gone through this and I think until you've done it yourself, you really cannot have any idea about it.
Hopefully the above is helpful.
Its been a stressful wait for this and now having this visa, i am just so stoked and have used this forum as a very useful reference and these types of posts were very useful so wanted to provide the same for other people:
I applied from New Zealand, my wife is in New Zealand with me also and we are moving across together for her to work. We had to submit proof of income for NZ work for the past 12 months and submit a letter from her UK employer (NHS) to confirm that she had a job that was starting in August.
The process for application was super confusing and there was seemingly alot of conflicting information and no central repository of it all but our application consisted of:
1. Priority payment receipt
Copy of picture page of my passport
2. NHS Surcharge payment receipt
3. Visa4UK application payment receipt
4. Contents page
5. Applicants documents
a) Printed Visa4UK application
b) VAF4A Appendix 2 filled out by hand
c) Copy of applicants passport picture page
d) A4 photocopies of current and previous applicants passports.
6. Sponsor's Financial documents
a) Letter of confirmation of job with NHS
b) Letter of confirmation of current job in NZ
c) Letter of confirmation of current earnings in NZ job
d) 12 months of payslips signed by her current NZ employer
e) 12 months of bank statements confirming deposit of pay from payslips into her bank account (we missed the final pay that was 3 days prior to the date of application and they came back and asked for us to submit this)
7. Proof of accommodation documents:
a) Letter from my partners parents confirming accommodation
b) Council tax bill for the accommodation
c) copy of register of title for accommodation
d) copy of contract exchange confirmation for accommodation
e) council tax bill for her parents as proof of primary residence
8. Sponsor's non-financial documents
a) Copy of sponsor's passport biometric page
b) Sponsor's letter of confirmation of support
9 Relationship documents
a) Applicant letter of confirmation of relationship
b) Marriage certificate (original)
c) 14 photo's throughout the 3 year relationship with captions for date/location
d) joint account bank statements
e) Birthday cards from previous 3 year's
f) Chat record excerpts from when we first started dating 3 years ago.
And a summary of the things that we found confusing/difficult throughout the application process:
1. Sending a self addressed envelope from NZ to Sheffield is basically impossible. We tried but found out that we could only do this through UPS at a huge cost (I think it was 250NZD each way). We ended up getting in touch with someone else who had done something like that and the Sheffield office came back to them and said that they needed the return addressed envelope to be to a UK address. We then went to the royal mail website and purchased a label that you then print off and affix to the return envelope. It does have an expiry date for delivery but it seems to have been ignored We sent the documents back to my partners parents place and they arrived about a week after sheffield received them.
2. It was quite confusing as to which application form to actually use - there is the new one that is for certain types of visas (not settlement visas). The one for settlement visas as of March 2019 is the Visa4UK website.
3. The information is pretty confusing and we found it easier to go through word by word the immigration rules as it was much clearer than the guidance documents that they seem to have spread all across the gov.co.uk website. The rules that we found were on the gov.uk website - search for "immigration rules" and "Chapter 08". Read everything thoroughly and take notes if you need to...
4. Just an aside to all this - in the process, we found out that civil unions in the UK only apply to same sex partnerships... late 2018 there was a case that went through the high court that allowed the first mixed sex civil partnership. It is changing in UK legislation but just be aware that there may be a fight to get it recognised in the UK until the legislation is pushed through (expected this year but who really knows...)
5. It is expensive. We expected it to be expensive and had saved for it but it still hurts forking across 6500NZD for the opportunity to live with my wife in her home country...
Happy to answer any specific questions that anyone has on the above... I know how stressful it is (I do paperwork for a living, my first language is English and I am pretty good at negotiating bureaucracy but this process was far harder than i had ever expected it to be). I really respect anyone who has gone through this and I think until you've done it yourself, you really cannot have any idea about it.
Hopefully the above is helpful.
