UK citizen married to EU national

Apologies if someone has asked something similar, I did a search but couldn't find anything which matched our situation exactly.

I am a British citizen and my wife is Portuguese. We are looking at applying for permanent residence for her but I don't think she qualifies as a 'qualified person'. My wife moved to the UK in October 2008 and started working shortly after. We got married in June 2010. We had a child in June 2012 and my wife stopped working to look after the child. We had another child in September 2013.

From this I gather that because she only worked for roughly 3 years and 9 months she hasn't exercised her treaty rights for long enough. I have been working the entire time and earning enough to support us both but that doesn't seem to matter because I am a British citizen.

We did have private health insurance but I'm not sure if it covered the exact periods or would be considered comprehensive enough (no cover for chronic illness except cancer) for the self-sufficiency test.

Am I correct that she isn't eligible for PR under the EEA route, and if so, is there any other route we could take to get permanent residence then citizenship?

Thanks!

Depends on detailed timeline and activities, including:

Dates of health insurance for self sufficent person.
- did it cover child bearing period from 2012-2013?

Duration of maternity leave in order to retain worker status.
And was it fully documented?

2008-2012 maybe ok as a worker qp;
you need to find a valid category of qp to cover the final year to accrue 5 continuous years.

With all this wild talk of Brexit wife should regularise stay now.
If not working at least get CSI and apply for EEA QP RC.

Thanks ever so much for your reply. I'll have a look into exact dates of work, health cover, maternity etc. and see if I can string together a 5 year period.

I still can't believe that anyone would want to kick out hard working EU citizens (full time mother is a full time job!), but who knows when it comes to beauraucracy!

oliverj4455 wrote:Thanks ever so much for your reply. I'll have a look into exact dates of work, health cover, maternity etc. and see if I can string together a 5 year period.

I still can't believe that anyone would want to kick out hard working EU citizens (full time mother is a full time job!), but who knows when it comes to beauraucracy!

Ah, the Hawkins effect as highlighted in Guardian.

And yet this is really down to lack of knowledge on part of hard-working yes but still ill-informed Union citizens.

Free movement is essentially about economic units contributing to the EU's collective GDP.

There are responsibilities to fulfill as well as rights to enjoy - its not simply about residing in a.n.other memberstate.
And any removal or removal of rights is as prescribed by EU law.

oliverj4455 wrote:my wife stopped working to look after the child.

Did your wife withdraw from the employment market completely? Or did she attempt to find work within 12 months of the start of maternity leave?

Maternity leave does not break continuity of residence if it is preceded by either worker or job-seeker status and is followed by worker or job-seeker status within 12 months of the start of maternity leave.

So, if your wife has proof (emails showing job applications, job interviews, etc) that she was job-seeking between June 2013 & October 2013, that period may still qualify.

Did the health plan cover her from the start of her maternity leave till October 2013?

oliverj4455 wrote:I still can't believe that anyone would want to kick out hard working EU citizens

Such is the (ill-informed) will of the people as democratically expressed.

One can't blame everything on bureaucracy. In this case, the bureaucracy is actually implementing EU law, not UK law anyway. EU law is considerably more liberal than UK law when it comes to immigration (ask anybody who has had to sponsor their non-EEA spouse), but there are still requirements to be met.

And hardworking non-EEA citizens have to leave the UK all the time, if they do not meet stringent conditions (such as earning above £35,000 if your are on the Tier 2 UK Immigration route), but nobody sheds a tear for them.