ilr/flr late application

Hi just found this forum and joined
Hoping someone can help or have experience of similar situation
I am a brit cit and my husband came from Egypt 2 years ago on a marriage visa and for a variety of reasons, including out of date information from a local community centre, we have passed the date for making a new application.
His visa ended on 19 Jan, last Thursday, and we are now panicking.

Many people will of course say that we have had 2 years to be prepared and save the money needed for the application, but it has taken over a year from him coming, to get a proper job, at first it was cash in hand work at shisha cafe's and the like, at 2 pounds an hour, and only recently he has started to find his way here, learn more about life here, language etc, and get formal employment.
He has worked very hard but it is too little too late

Shortly after he arrived my own self employment ( I did cleaning, gardening and related home services) suffered as a result of the recession, along with many other people we just managed to scrape by, which made things worse,and despite our best efforts have struggled to raise the near thousand pounds needed for a ILR.

We did not ignore this however and sought the help and advice of a local community centre who apart from offering courses in English had knowledge and experience of the complexities of ukba.
Or so we thought!.
We were advised that if we could not make the ILR, then we could apply for an extension which would be 550 and when we asked about the test, either life in the UK, or English exam, the advisor explained that we would not need this as we would only be asking for an extension, which would then give us more time to save for the ILR and get the test then.

We managed through begging and borrowing from friends to get the 550 and were all set to go, then the bomb shell was dropped!
We now needed a test, even for an extension, and quickly applied for the life in the uk test which is this Friday, 8 days after the visa runs out

To add to our problems, my husbands factory last week told him he can no longer work untill he gets a new visa, so are also worried about the proof of being able to sustain himself bit of the application, though his employer has promised to take him back on as soon as he has a letter from the home office or a new visa


As we are now in a very tight spot I am appealing to anyone here who can point the way forward or who knows of any other way we can tackle this

Thanks in advance

Oh dear. Well - yes your husband does need to take an English language test in order to to apply for FLR, however the Life in the UK test is not suitable for this application, as he needs to show that his speaking and listening is at at minimum level, and the Life in the UK test is not a test of speaking and listening. To satisfy the english language requirements, he would need to take one of the approved English languages tests, which can be found
here

That said - I would not agree that FLR as opposed to ILR is appropriate. The reason for this is because the rules for FLR require that your husband has current leave issued for more than 6 months. See 284(i)

On the other hand, applying for ILR as the spouse of a British person do not require that your husband has current leave, as the requirements are rather that he 'has completed' two years as your spouse . See 287(a)(i)(a)

The life in the UK test IS appropriate for an applicaiton for ILR. Therefore I would suggest if you can get together the extra money for the ILR application, it would be better to make this rather than apply for FLR, as the likely result of applying for FLR will be (worst case scenario) they refuse the application without a right of appeal, and best case, they grant him discretionary leave, and he would have to complete 6 years in this category before qualifying for ILR.

I would suggest seeking advice from a qualified immigration solicitor/advisor on this application if you can. If you are on a low income you may be entitled to free legal help.[/url]

thanks for this reply.
I think we will be needing legal help with this especially as the application is late already and due to no immediate extra money available for ILR (better option but another 500! - where do they get these prices?), the problem is that it will be worse the more late we are.
Its such a worry as to return to Egypt now would be unbearable as a lot of trouble where he is from