Wife Rejected Citizenship - Next Steps

Morning Everyone

Some background to my wifes application.

She's a French national, first moved to UK in 2000 until we moved to France in April 2016 with my work for the European Commission. Brexit saw an end to my work in France in June 2018 so we returned to the UK 1st September 2018 and have been here ever since. Wife has ILR and applied for Citizenship under section 6(2) (3 years in UK and married to British Citizen).

We determined that my wife could apply during a 5 day window in February 2021. We had calculated that we were in the UK during this time 3 years previously and whilst we could have waited until 1st September 2021 we wanted to take a chance earlier (Brexit and Covid has made any attempts to travel back to France to see family extremely difficult, upsetting and stressful so were prepared to take a punt). She met all the other criteria etc but the only issue was the number of days out of the country during the three year period. We calculated that on the last day of the February 2018 window she could technically apply, but she had been outside the UK for 303 days. This was over the permitted number of days but we applied for discretion in this matter as she was accompanying me on an EU contract. So we applied on 23rd Feb 2018.

11 days before the 6 months from the application date time limit, my wife received the following email:

"I refer to your application for British citizenship.

Unfortunately we are unable to consider your application under section 6(2) as you have not met a mandatory requirement. However, we can consider your case under section 6(1).

In order for us to do this you must first provide us with any absences you had from the United Kingdom between 23rd February 2016 to 15th April 2016."

My wife replied immediately asking what mandatory requirement she had not met (we assumed it would be the number of absences) and she received the following response:

"A person applying under this section is required to have been in the United Kingdom on the actual date 3 years before making the application.

Your application was received on 23rd February 2021, and so your qualifying period is from 23th February 2018 to 23rd February 2021.

According to your application form, you left the United Kingdom on 16th April 2016 and returned on 1st September 2018.

As you were not in the United Kingdom on 23rd February 2018, this requirement is not met."

My wife replied stating that she was in the UK on 23rd Feb 2018 (we attached the Eurotunnel booking for this and bank statements showing transactions in the UK on this date) and we also provided the information regarding being considered under section 6(1).

Since then there has been radio silence despite a follow up email from her a week or so ago.

So my question really is, where do we go from here?

I have re-read the qualifying criteria which states that someone must be physically present in the UK 3 years prior to the application, which she was. It doesn't state anywhere that she needed to reside in the UK at that moment or anything else.

In addition, we're reading between the lines in the email that if she could be considered under section 6(1) that they are prepared to apply discretion for our absences, otherwise why would they even suggest it?

And lastly.... we now find ourselves in a strange no mans land. We don't know what is going on with this application and seemingly have no way of finding out. However, we've now passed 1st Sept 2021 which would mean that we technically could re-apply knowing that she 100% meets the criteria. Anyone had any experience of this or could offer any guidance?

Many thanks!

Oops - said we applied 23 Feb 2018 but meant 23 Feb 2021

I can add two bits of information I learned recently.

I submitted my application earlier this year and I suspected I made a mistake in one of my travel dates, it was a minor 1 day difference, not above any absence limits at all but I wanted to be thorough so I submitted a Subject Access Request and asked them to provide me with just the travel history they have on me so I could double check my AN application.

The SAR took 80 days (instead of the published expectation of 30.

In the SAR they included EVERYTHING they have on my immigration history including full copies of all my applications, some screenshots from their system and even the event logs of all my applications (when it was decided, when checks were performed, some case notes, etc)

The relevant parts for your case are:

In my travel history they didn't include any of my arrivals via the Euro tunnel, only flights. This concerns me a little because I did have several euro tunnel arrivals during my qualifying period but they have no record of them. My travel record, from what they sent me, looks a bit odd with two departures without any arrival records.

I believe this is likely what happened in your wife's case and you have done the right thing by providing travel evidence for the dates they are questioning.

Your other assumption, that they are asking you to change your application to considered under 6(1) also seems correct to me. It has been reported in this forum that case workers will write to applicants and let them change the application date so that the "present in the UK' requirements is satisfied and this sounds similar to what they're asking you to do: submit additional details for consideration.

Lastly, I don't think your application has been 'rejected', they're still considering it and have provided an alternative, so don't panic =)

Firstly, you're right "rejected" is a bit of an overreaction. If anything after reading some of the horror stories of being flatly rejected with no hope I was pleasantly surprised that options to get the application approved were present to my wife.

That's very interesting for the Eurotunnel information you got back from your SAR. To me it was clear in my head that they would put the pieces of the puzzle together from our list of absences and see that we were in the UK exactly 3 years prior. As having read on this MB, it's one of the most basic criteria and there's no way on earth that we'd have applied not knowing we were in the UK on those dates. We weren't explicit in the covering letter that we were in the UK as we just assumed it could be worked out from the information we provided - the covering letter was more concerned about applying for discretion over the length of absences more than anything else.

Yes I read on here that case workers were allowing people to respond to emails on certain dates allowing their application to be reconsidered from that date. That's also what we now find frustrating because we had to provide all the new info by 27th August - 5 days before we'd hit 1st Sept 2021 and be eligible 100% under section 6(2).

I guess right now it's just a question of how long this will now take. We were having emails back and forth with the case worker until we provided the info she wanted and since then we've had nothing other than an automated email saying that our case has exceeded the 6 months time limit but absolutely no indication as to how long it might take from now. We will try calling the number on the email but I'm not holding my breath. We've travelled back and forth to France a few times this year and the way that border control is treating my wife because she's the only French passport holder (even though I have french naturalisation and kids are half and half) is not helping what is already a very difficult situation under Covid rules.

Quick update - wife received confirmation of her British Citizenship today! Absolutely thrilled and relieved to have got it.

No mention of whether she got it via 6(1) or 6(2) but I guess that's irrelevant now. Citizenship ceremony booked for next week too!