EEA3 refused - no evidence of valid CSI supplied

I'm sorry to hear of your refusal. It seems they have stung you with the lack of CSI coverage, it seems so unfair that you cannot fix something and backdate it to the past.

I'm new to this board, someone more knowledgable might come along to give you advice on what to do next. May I say though that your post is extremely well written and well organised. How the Home Office doesn't want to give someone of your obvious intelligence permanent residence is a mystery to me. Good luck.

Bulgarian health authorities can help you with that.

If you can get a letter or statement from the Bulgarian health authorities (translated in English if necessary) stating the extent of your health cover (i.e that it also covers you while in the UK)

You may have a look at this thread.

http://www.immigrationboards.com/eea-ro ... CSI%20eea3

Hi Everyone,

I have applied EEA2 residence card on the 27th of December 2013.
And I have received my EEA family residence card for 5 years on the 3rd of March.

When I applied my visa, my husband was self-sufficient and was still searching for a job.
In this case the conditions were that we both have comprehensive health insurance.

My husband has started a new job on 10 March 2014 thus paying national insurance.

In what way does this change our situation with regards to insurance.
Can my husband end his comprehensive health insurance?

I have got a job yet but I have rental income, will get and pay national insurance soon.

How will this affect my own situation as I will apply for a NI number next week?

I do not plan to get a job soon, will start a business next year. And if I want to apply EEA4( permanent residence card) do I need to buy comprehensive insurance for myself and my husband for 5 years? Or it could be cancel if my husband got a job.

Thanks for your replies @LunarGirl and @askmeplz82!

Apologies for the late reply, I have been trying actively to sort this thing out.

@LunarGirl, thanks, I'll take it as a compliment. Sadly, the world rarely works on the basis of how intelligent people are or appear to be If it did, that would have solved a lot of issues worldwide...

@askmeplz82, sounds like this person was in a very similar situation to the one I am in at the minute. The downside here is that Bulgarian authorities are notorious for not doing their job right or not at all, so I don't know how helpful they will be.

I got in touch with them and I was told that form E104 should suffice, though I am certain that E104 is not the thing I am looking for. After a week of speaking to various authorities and people, I believe I managed to get to a person from the Bulgarian equivallent of the NHS who is willing to write a formal letter addressed to UKVI confirming my health insurance status for the period of 09/2008 - 09/2013. I have not received it yet but, as soon as I have it I will share it here to check if people think it would suffice (though in the end it will be UKVI who will decide).

@Careyleeuk1118,
I apprecite you seeking help but could you please open up your own topic in the forum as this topic is very different from what you are asking. Please respect the subject of other topics as any replies on a different matter may end up flooding topics with irrelevant posts making it harder for people to follow the discussion. Thanks!

Hey everyone.

So I managed to get in touch with my home country's authorities where I have been insured for the period I was a student and I finally managed to get my hands on a document that can certify my health insurance status. It's not in perfect English but conveys the meaning well enough. I quote:

[On a National Health Insurance Fund template]

CERTIFICATE

We certify that Mr [full name], born on [date of birth] in Sofia, with Personal Identity Code in Bulgaria [uniform civil number], in the period since 01.09.2008 until present has been and as of 08.04.2014 continues to be insured with the National Health Insurance Fund.

The present is submitted to serve before the UK Visas, Customs and Immigration services.

[Date of Issue]
[Name and signature of NHIF representative]
[NHIF stamp]

The uniform civil number mentioned above is a unique number issued to every citizen of Bulgaria and is used for all health and social insurance aspects as well as tax payments. It's something of a combined UK National Insurance number and Community Health Index Number (Scotland). It is also printed on all official forms of identification (passport and national ID card).

In theory, as long as one is insured in one EEA country this should also cover sickness in other EEA countries according to EU policy. NHIF is also the agency that issues the EHIC cards, so you have to be insured with them to hold one.

I know that in the end it's up to UKVI to decide but, in your view, would the above be sufficient evidence of CSI?

Hey all,

Just as a follow-up, I reapplied with the certificate mentioned in my previous post as proof of comprehensive sickness insurance and yesterday, about 4 weeks later, I got my documents back and enclosed was a document certifying permanent residence. Seems like it was good enough.

@askmeplz82,
Thanks very much for your initial input! Your link was indeed very reassuring and I wouldn't have thought about contacting my home country's government for CSI document other than the EHIC cards themselves.

Hopefully this will help future applicants. Case closed.

Hi,

Sorry to resurrect this thread but I have just registered, so cannot send personal messages.

I am in a similar situation as the OP. I am looking to understand the exact format of this letter (I am Bulgarian who did a 4-year degree in the UK from 2008).

As it stands, the only thing I can get as evidence of paid insurance in my country is the E104 form which I think would not guarantee me approval from the British Authorities ( I will, of course, get it translated). Is it possible to get a scanned copy of the letter, so I can request a similar letter from the Bulgarian authorities?

I expect the OP not to check this thread, so if a mod can PM him, it would be appreciated. Otherwise my question would probably remain unanswered (unless someone can confirm if a translated E104 with dates on it will be sufficient).

Thanks

Member AnotherUUID hasn't visited the forum since mid-2014.

Suggest you print off a copy of the letter (quoted above) to show the Bulgarian authorities.

Hello @Right,

Welcome to the forums!

I'm afraid I don't have a copy of the document anymore. However, try getting in touch with the Bulgarian National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) and explain your situation. If you have consistenly paid your health insurance with no arrears and you have been renewing your European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) you should be able to ask for a document certifying this. You may have to insist that the E104 does not suffice (and the E104 is in fact obsolete and no longer in use).

I would strongly recommend contacting NHIF via email instead of phoning since the people answering the landline are usually very impolite and not fully aware of what you actually need. You can find the contact details for your regional NHIF division here.

If you're in the UK or abroad and you can't go in person explain your circumstances and you may be asked to send a scanned copy of your ID. If you're as lucky as I was the whole thing should be quite hassle-free and you will be able to get your document by email in both Bulgarian and English within a week. Assuming you do receive a copy in English as well you shouldn't need to legalise it or do anything else with it. UKVI will accept it as it is.

One last thing, I strongly recommend that you enclose a cover letter along with your EEA3 application explaining your circumstances and why you have provided this document instead of, say, one or more EHI cards as UKVI can be very thorough and will usually reject your application if they're not completely satisfied.

Hope this helps!

I stand corrected, welcome back AnotherUUID.

This forum & its members never ceases to
amaze & be amazing.

Thanks a lot for your reply.

While my insurance is fully paid (or will be soon), I have not consistently had an EHIC just because I kind of didn't bother (and was not aware it was needed for permanent residence).

I will email the NHIF and will ask them about my case. Mine is a bit different, as I only want them to confirm up to a certain historic date after which I started working for a continuous period up until now (and still in work) where I'm covered by the UKNI.

Thanks a lot again and I will update this thread with more info.

@noajthan,
Thanks! This forum was very helpful and informative to my case, it only makes sense for me to return the favour as best as I can. Luckily, I still receive notifications about new posts in this thread.

@Right,
No problem. As you can see from the quoted document above that I was given, it doesn't really mention EHIC anywhere. I cannot say for sure whether this will make a difference to your case but keep us posted. It would be interesting to hear the outcome of your case (hopefully successful).

Small update. Letter is in progress and it seems things might get sorted on that front thanks to my hard-working and persistent mom! The people in Sofia seem to be much more responsive than the regional offices who frankly are just lazy and do not even try.

All I need now is to gather a gazillion more pieces of evidence to prove my residence in the UK for the past 5 years...

I will keep you updated and thanks again for your invaluable help!

Thank you for this thread, I reckon it will be very helpful to many people. As a small aside here, if you had a BR1 (recognising you as a student) ISSUED before June 2011, you are entitled to an exemption which means you do not have to provide CSI evidence at all. I did quite a bit of research to end up with the text below and I did get my residence card (Bulgarian again) without any CSI evidence, so presumably they found it acceptable. Enter the following into the big text box at the end of I think section 9 of the EEA(PR) form, making sure to change all personal details and dates as appropriate:

This concerns Comprehensive Sickness Insurance (hereafter "CSI")
evidence usually required for this application. I fall under
what's known as "transitional arrangements" and do not need to provide
evidence of CSI. Reference [1] says

"Transitional arrangements are being introduced, so that an application
for permanent residence as a student will not be refused solely on the
grounds that there is no evidence of comprehensive sickness insurance on
the date of decision where UKBA issued a registration certificate to the
applicant on the basis of their residence in the UK as a student before
20th June 2011."

I was issued a BR1 Yellow Student Registration Certificate in April
2011 (attached to this application is the Home Office approval letter,
ref XXXXXXXX). This BR1 certificate was kept by Home Office when I
applied for a BR2 Blue certificate, granted in March 2013 (both BR2
cert. and approval letter are attached). I trust this is conclusive
evidence that I was issued a registration certificate on the basis of
being a student in the UK before June 2011 and therefore I do not need
to provide evidence of CSI with this application.

See Reference [2] for very similar wording explaining transitional
arrangements (though without using the phrase).

[1] Section F, paragraph 13 from document "Notice 07 11 Comprehensive sickness insurance revised and reissued.pdf" attached to the 22 September 2011 official UK Border Agency response to Freedom of Information Request https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... es_and_csi . DIRECT DOC LINK: http://tinyurl.com/eea-csi-foi . Authored by European Operational Policy Team, issue number "7/2011 (Revised)".

[2] Paragraph 6.9 from "Guidance on dealing with applications from children born in UK to European Union nationals", DIRECT LINK: http://tinyurl.com/eea-csi-rights-policy . The guidance is 100% relevant to me as the paragraph relates to the EEA nationals themselves (the parents), not the children. Authored by HM Passport Office, version 11.2014 .

@fairysimile,

Thank you for your post. It is informative and you are correct in mentioning the transitional arrangements for holders of a yellow registration certificate (BR1). I remember pointing this out in my cover letter that went along with my EEA3/EEA(PR) application. However, I would like stress that your argument that CSI is not needed at all is a bit misleading and this is definitely not the case or at least not formally.

In particular, if you are a holder of a BR1 registration certificate (yellow card) issued before 20 June 2011 then you are only exempt from providing evidence of valid CSI for the continuous period spend as a student (before and after the date your BR1 certificate was issued). If you are the holder of only BR2 registration card and have never held BR1 or have not been a student then this will only give you an exemption for the time prior to the date that the registration certificate was issued. These transitional arrangements were covered in Chapter 6 of the 'European casework instructions: Free Movement of Persons Directive', namely, 'Annex B – Comprehensive sickness insurance – Transitional arrangements for students' up until the form was renamed from EEA3 to EEA(PR). This is also pointed out in Section F.14 of the document that you provided.

The BR2 registration certificate (blue card) itself does not give you any further exemption of CSI different to BR1 and was usually not issued to students who had to apply for BR1 instead.

I am happy that your application for DCPR was approved and you did not have to go through the extra hassle to provide further evidence of CSI but, as you can see, on paper your case is definitely not conclusive and falls into a very narrow set of circumstances.

To confirm my suspicion, my case was very similar to yours. I held a BR1 yellow card issued in March 2009, and later a BR2 blue card issued in March 2013. Yet, as you can see from this thread, I was asked to provide evidence of CSI for periods of unemployment and for the time after I finished my undergraduate studies (2012) which includes my postgraduate studies which were not included as part of the exemption as they commenced after 20 June 2011.

So the bottom line is, it depends on how thorough and knowledgeable the caseworker is and how much they will pick on the details.

I would thus advise anyone using the transitional arrangements to not take this lightly and, unless they fall into the exact same circumstances, they should assume they will need to provide evidence of CSI for any period after their registration card was issued and most certainly any period after 20 June 2011 that they have not continued to be a student. Unless they want to risk having to spend the time and money to re-apply.

AnotherUUID, thank you once again. I just got my DCPR recently and what a relief it was!

I am sure I would have failed without this thread. You are my residency expert and hero!

@Right, congratulations! And no problem, I'm glad I could help.

Hey @Right @AnotherUUID - sorry to resurrect an old thread, but I'm in a similar situation and have been trying to get proof of CSI after throwing away old EHIC cards except for the last.

So far I've gotten in touch with the Sofia RHIF, and the response I received was that I need to send a "free text application" to the "manager of NHIF". Did either of you have to do something similar to get this letter, or was it just a simple email to a certain person? Which email address did you use to get in contact?

@dga,

The email that I used was the one listed in the website linked in my previous post above. Having just checked my emails with them from back then, I did indeed have to fill in an application form addressed in a generic way to the manager of NHIF asking for a document certifying my insurance status. The form was sent out to me by email in .docx format and I only had to fill in the blanks as well as attach a copy of my ID. Judging by the email dates, the whole thing took about four weeks to sort out.

If it's going to be of any use feel free to PM me and I can send you a copy of the form that I received, though it's worth noting that things may have changed since as this was over three years ago.

Edit: I realised that there's a minimum number of posts required to use the PM functionality, so here's a direct link: http://bit.ly/2rQQhOw

Hope this helps.

Hi dga, I will look into this when I get home. If I don't respond in here by Wednesday evening, post again, so I remember.

@AnotherUUID
Thanks a lot for this, the form which you uploaded looks incredibly useful. For some reason, I wasn't sent a form to fill so I will ask for one. Did you send the completed version with the copy of the ID card via email? and did you receive your certificate via email or letter? Lastly, which email address did you send the completed form to, was it nzok[at]nhif.bg, your RHIF or something else?

Apologies for all the questions. This thread was absolutely invaluable in figuring out CSI in my case.

@dga,
Yes, I sent it over email along with a scanned copy of my ID. I filled it in on a computer and used a digital drawing pad for the signature but if you don't have one I'm sure if you sign it the ol' fashioned way and scan the form it should be alright.

The email address I sent it to was a direct address to a person at NHIF who responded to my original query, so without asking for permission and not knowing their exact position I'd rather not share it publicly. However, my initial query was sent to sofia@nhif.

The document was originally issued for collection at their office in both Bulgarian and (not very good but acceptable) English. I told them I was unable to pick it up in person as I didn't fancy the trip all the way for a piece of paper so they scanned both copies and sent them over to my email. That said, at the time they did say it's possible to arrange for someone of close relationship to you (e.g. immediate family member) to collect it instead. If you want the original, this might be the way to go, though I don't really think HO would care as the NHIF contact details are printed on it and they can simply be in touch with them to verify the authenticity if they need to. At the end of the day, you can explain all this in your cover letter to HO as you should for any documents that you can only provide copies and not originals.

To be perfectly honest, with the exception of the person I first spoke to over the phone, I was incredibly impressed by the way NHIF handled the case which could have otherwise turned out to be a very long and bureaucratic process requiring me to go in person over a period of several weeks. Thumbs up for the caseworkers!

Hey guys, just a quick update. My parter (who I was posting on behalf of) received her DCPR today! We got in contact with NHIF and was asked to fill in a form requesting an S041 form, which we received as a scan via email the following day. We submitted a print-out of that form with a translation, alongside an EHIC card that she still had, which expired in September 2016, and an explanation in the covering letter, and I guess it was enough. Thanks again