Hi all,
I’ve always found this forum useful and I hope somebody might be able to offer advice on my current situation.
I am a British national and my fiancé is a Brazilian national. We were originally planning to get married last year, but when COVID hit, our plans were delayed.
He is currently in the UK on a standard tourist visa (no application made, leave granted at immigration check upon entry to the UK last year), due to expire early February. His flight back to Brazil has been cancelled twice now, most recently on Monday and we’re struggling to get flights arranged to get him home before his tourist visa expires.
Our intention is to apply for a Fiancé Visa as soon as he arrives back in Brazil and submit all the usual evidence and biometrics via VFS. However, while looking through our options, I noticed a page on the GOV.UK website which seems to suggest that, due to the pandemic, we can apply for the Fiancé Visa from within the UK instead. Link below (section: If you intend to stay in the UK).
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus ... -residents
I called the Coronavirus Information Helpline to check this on Monday and the advisor confirmed that we could apply from within the UK and simply select the option for applying within the UK instead of outside the UK.
It seemed a little too good to be true, so I called back today to confirm and was told by another advisor that actually we couldn’t apply from within the UK, as we wouldn’t be permitted to move from one short term visa (Tourist) to another (Fiancé). However, the above guidance doesn’t draw this distinction and invites all applications. A third call for some clarity resulted in the CIH advisor saying he’d have to send a query email to the Home Office, which I’m now waiting for a response on.
My question is: has anybody been in this position and received any clarity on whether someone in the UK on a tourist visa can, because of the difficulty in getting flights home and the fact that we’d be imminently applying for a Fiancé Visa anyway, apply from within the UK and hopefully simplify what so far has been an incredibly stressful and confusing process?
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