TeWaio wrote:Hi everyone,
I have followed this board for a while and appreciate all the knowledge that is shared.
My situation:
Arrived UK 29-09-05.
4 years on Tier 4, followed by 2 years on Tier 2 (general), followed by 3 years on Tier 4 again, followed by Tier 2 (general) I currently hold.
Meet all requirements for 10-year ILR (schedule of absences < 540 days, no convictions, no breaks in leave etc.) therefore eligible to apply for 10-year ILR on 01-09-15 (Home Office accepts applications 28 days early).
Have recently learned I am being made redundant by my Tier 2 employer effective 29-05-15. Therefore leave will be curtailed to 28-07-15 (termination date + 60 days), or, as I understand happens in practice, a extra week or so to account for the time it takes my employer to notify the Home Office and the Home Office to curtail my leave.
Therefore, I will probably have my leave to remain curtailed to a date sometime in early-mid August, which is a matter of weeks before I am eligible to apply for 10-year ILR.
There seems to be a 28-day 'grace' period that happens immediately after a leave curtailment date passes, whereby the Home Office can accept visa applications, and if said applications are successful do not count this as "breaking" ILR eligibility. My question is this: Were I not able to find another Tier 2 job in time, and were I to overstay beyond my likely early-mid August leave curtailment date and then submit my 10-year ILR application on 01-09-15, would that application be automatically refused, or would it stand a chance of being accepted (being within the 28-day grace period) if I otherwise met every possible requirement?
Thanks for reading. In a pretty tough situation here so any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Best Wishes,
TW
Just to update everyone on my situation. The letter of curtailment never arrived from the Home Office after my gardening leave at my previous employer ended, which I was surprised about. That said, I found another job and completed a successful in-person application for a new Tier 2 work visa on August 28th, so even if my leave to remain had been strictly curtailed to the 2 month guidelines I would have been one day inside this.
I became eligible to apply for ILR via the 10 year route from September 1st, and did so via a premium service appointment in October. At the PSC, there was a problem with my schedule of absences in that the information I had provided to my solicitor showed 614 days absent, but the solicitor had added up the pages wrong (!) and had the total down as 350 days. Neither they nor I checked, and the first time I realised was sitting with the case worker, which was a bit of a shock.
Rather than reject my application outright, the Home Office kept it open for a few weeks as some of my absences were for business trips that were unavoidable through work. I spent the next few weeks collecting various original letters from my previous employers to verify work trips (both dates and that they were unavoidable in nature).
My absences minus my work trips came to 536 days over 10 years, just four days inside the limit. I have just found out this afternoon the the Home Office have accepted this, and granted me ILR, which is a huge relief.
Many thanks to the contributors on this board, and good luck to all with their applications.
