My Indonesian girlfriend had first visitor visa rejected....

Hi guys, bit of a long introduction but here goes...

So I am a british citizen from birth, and have taken the last year off work and spent the time traveling around South East Asia. After 3 months traveling around Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and Laos i ended up in Macau and met my girlfriend (who is from indonesia), instead of just staying a week or two, i ended up staying over 3 and a half months, living with her whilst she was in full time employment as a tour leader. At this time she finished working in Macau and we travelled together to Hong Kong (10 days) and Taiwan (2 weeks for her, 3 weeks for me).

After this she returned to her home city of Surabaya and i met her the week after. I stayed with her family and we made further trips together, to Singapore and South Korea. Spending just over 2 months in Indonesia before i flew to Australia as my flight home was already booked from Brisbane. During this time she was leading a group to Europe, we kept contact by messages when we had wifi and the time zones allowed, phone calls were not really accessible as our budgets were limited by this point. Two days before i was due to fly home her father passes away and i made the decision to throw away my flight home and visit her once more, booking the earliest flight available to go and support her, the 4th visit i made to Surabaya Indonesia since April 2014.

During this time she has also applied and failed to get a visitor visa to the UK, reason being that the ECO doubted our relationship and that they have no evidence of the place she will stay when she arrives in the UK. This was the biggest mistake because we didn't exactly give any proof of our relationship, other than a 3 line email just from me inviting her to stay at my address and my passport number. In hindsight its no surprise it was rejected. Now we are going through the second application, I've written a detailed account of our whole relationship, stating how we met, time spent together, places and dates we've travelled together, copies of flight tickets, passport and visa granted in each country, photos with date stamps in each place over the last 9 months, copy of messages sent through mobile application (Line), information about the place i live ( currently with my mother as i didn't want to pay rent for a year while i was gone).

The problem i have is no physical proof that i live with my mother, we have no tenancy agreement etc, she owns the house outright. Also i have been traveling for over a year and exhausted nearly all of my savings, not to mention that i haven't earned a penny during this time either! Furthermore I'm a self employed carpenter so when i get home and start working in a week or two my earnings may be a little sporadic so may find it hard to provide proof of earning over the threshold amount, although once i have been working over 6 months i should be able to prove the amount i earn.

So basically i need help to know if i should submit my bank account details, or should i borrow money from family to increase the balance in the short term? She has approximately $4000 USD and wants to come and visit me for at least a month, but also wants to stay for 3 months. Should the application request to stay just a month or for 3? Is her funds enough for that length of stay? Also in the not too distant future we are thinking about marriage but would prefer she can meet my family first and although we are sure about it, obviously 9 months is still a little bit soon, should we mention this in the application for the visitor visa?

Any help and advice will be gratefully received

The most important hurdle to get over is for your girlfriend to submit strong evidence that she has ties to her home country and a reason to return. This would normally be permanent ongoing employment (with a letter from her employer guaranteeing a job to return to), ownership of property or family ties. Without this the Entry Officer may well take the view that with a boyfriend in the UK she will overstay her visitor visa.

Thanks for your reply Casa, I'm sure she can obtain a letter from her employer to this effect, however she does only work part time. She doesn't own any property but there is a scheme that she can enter where she can start the downpayments on a property that will be built by 2018, this is the only affordable housing available and even then its too expensive for the average Indonesian person to afford.

How long should she apply to come to the UK for though, i have read about people applying for a one month stay and then staying 5 months and being refused entry the next time. Should she apply for a three month stay and just keep her fingers crossed, or is it safer just to apply for one month? I have mentioned a rough itinerary for a one month stay in my invitation letter but she has plenty of funds to stay for 3 months and we want to spend as much time together as possible. Ultimately we will get married and the plan is for her to come and live in the uk with me. Should we mention it to immigration in the form of requesting an extension ?

Can anyone please advise how long she should apply for her to stay for?

If there are funds for 3 months then apply for this. Show an itinerary that covers the 3 months.

So my girlfriend reapplied the visitor visa in November 5th. She has prepared better documents after the first rejection. Within 15 working days she got the visa approved!! Here are the list of documents she has submitted for the second application :

A. Proof of employment
1. Sponsor letter from her employer stating her employment status, how long she has been working in the company, her salary, the length of the leave given, and the guarantee message that she will return to the company after she finished the trip as per working contract.
2. Certificate of company registration & her boss' bank statement
3. Pay slips, bank statement (from April to October, with last balance around USD5100), and bank reference.
4. Explanation on each deposit in the bank account (her previous saving before working in current company, how she make deposit each month because she received the salary in cash, and attached all proofs of the origin of money which she got from other source)

B. Personal information
1. Copy of Birth certificate, family card, ID card, taxation card, life insurance card, her IELTS test result, copy of her bachelor degree and her transcript (she knows that ECO didn't ask for the last three documents but she prefer to submit everything she could to support her application)
2. Travel Insurance (has been issued and paid, stating the dates of intended traveling)
3. Flight ticket (issued and paid)
4. Her personal letter explaining her intention to travel to the UK, how she met me, how is our relationship has been going, explaining her jobs, salary and saving she has, and how she can prove all of ECO's doubt on the refusal letter. She also enclosed list of our relationship proof (she made a summary of all proofs she submitted to make it easy for ECO to check on each paper).

C. Accommodation and Relationship
She stated in the application that she will stay in my house in Bournemouth (belong to my mother's name) for a month.
So we submitted proofs of the eligible accommodation, such as:
1. Invitation email from my mother
2. Credit card bill stating my mother's name and full address
3. Photos of the house, rooms, bathroom, and living room.
4. My scanned driving license which has my address on it
5. Invitation from my brother to stay in his apartment in London, along with his electricity bill which has his name and full address.
6. Two hotel bookings in Bristol and Newquay from Booking.com (match with the travel itinerary we wrote in the application)

For the relationship proof we submitted:
1. My scanned passport
2. Copy of Indonesian visas I had when visiting her in Indonesia
3. Supporting letter from me stating that I'm inviting her to stay in my place, explaining our relationship, our travel history, and the itinerary of her one month visit to the UK
4. Letter of declaration that I will be responsible for her support, maintenance and accommodation in the UK. Completed with my signature.
(I'm not sponsoring her in this application so i didn't submit my bank account. She uses her personal bank statement only.)
5. Email from her elder sister and her best friend (separate email) acknowledging our relationship (we have met before) along with our photo together as a proof.
6. Printed photos of us since we first met until the most current (all photos are printed with automatic time stamp and/or geotagged location from our smartphone)
7. Scanned boarding passes, flight & train tickets of our previous travel
8. Screen capture of her Facebook which has relationship status with me
9. Scanned postcards I sent her
10. Print out our conversation in Whatsapp and LINE app since we first met until the most current.

It was pretty thick documents, but worth all the effort as she finally got the visa. The ECO sent back her documents except listed below (which I assume the most essential documents that ECO need) :
1. Sponsor letter from her employer
2. Her bank reference and her bank statement from May to October
3. Her personal letter and the summary of relationship proofs
4. Supporting letter from me and my declaration letter
5. Her explanation letter of the origin of the money she deposited to the bank

I hope information above can help anyone who want to apply for the visitor visa.

Good news. Congrats.
Remember that having the visa is not enough to enter the country.
She should be able to answer all questions and to show some proof of her income and return ticket and enough money for her holidays in the point of entry to the UK.
She can get lucky and have very few questions but this is the rule. Better safe than sorry.