Extending the spouse Visa ( Please help)

Dear all,

we have landed ourselves in complicated situation as a result of our ignorance.

I was granted spouse visa to the UK which ends on Dec 12th 2005. However we lived TOGETHER in the UK only for 4 months. My spouse and sponsor who is a british citizen had to leave UK due to some emergency on the job. I lived there(ALONE) in the UK without my sponsor for 3 months hoping my wife would return back after her work assignment. But that kept on extending, then realised that I had to get back immediately because I was not supposed to live and work there without my spouse. Since then we have been living in my country and hold a very good job in my home country.


Since my Visa is due to expire on Dec 12th, I have a few questions and concerns

1) Will my stay in the UK without my spouse affect my chances of getting spouse visa extension and will that any way affect my ILR.

2) Right now both of us are living in my home country, what are the different ways of extending my spouse visa just in case we want to move back. My spouse need to be living and working and having a home to live for sponsoring my spouse visa which is highly unlikely. Please suggest any workaround.(HSMP, Visitor visa etc or rush back and start living). But I do not want to leave this job and start all over again in UK.

3) Do I have to wait till April 2007 when we would have married for 4 years which gives us the eligibility to apply for ILR from my home country itself.

Please advice,

Kantg

Using your numbering :-

1. That will probably not even become apparent from the completed SET(M) application form. However your time outside the UK might have a bearing upon whether you will be granted ILR.
2. It is not clear when you and your wife intend to move back to live in the UK? Before your current visa expires? After that? Please clarify.
3. Wrong assumptions ... you would need to live together for four years outside the UK before being able to apply for ILR abroad.

Thanks John for a very quick response.

1) Since I have not lived in the UK for a sufficient time, I will not apply for the ILR, instead I am contemplating on extending my spouse visa which is, I guess is very difficult since we both are living outside the UK. Since you are saying my stay in the UK without my spouse and sponsor will not in anyway affect my chances of getting ILR if I apply for it in the future. I am a relieved person.)


2) We have no clue as to when we would consider a move to UK. If at all if we move after my Visa expires, I believe it would be very tough to get spouse visa extension. That is the reason I asked the group about how to get the spouse visa again, since she wont be there in the UK to sponsor me.

3)Please clarify me on this. Is it 4 years of living together after marriage, irrespective of in which country you live. Or is it only OUTSIDE the UK. Does our stay for 6 months in the will be taken into account?? We have been living together all the while since marriage.

Thanks a lot for your time

Kantg1

It seems to me that all you need to do is to let your current spouse visa expire, and then when the two of you want to live in the UK again then to apply for a new visa.

I did not actually say that you living in the UK is not a problem, I said it probably would not be detected upon the application form. Clearly the spouse visa was granted to enable you to live with your spouse, and you were not doing that.

After all paragraph 281(iii) of the Immigration Rules reads :-

each of the parties intends to live permanently with the other as his or her spouse and the marriage is subsisting

After regards the four-year point, paragraph 281(1)(b) reads :-

the applicant is married to a person who has a right of abode in the United Kingdom or indefinite leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom and is on the same occasion seeking admission to the United Kingdom for the purposes of settlement and the parties were married at least 4 years ago, since which time they have been living together outside the United Kingdom

My understanding is that even if the couple have lived together in the UK previously then they need to live together abroad (outside the UK) for at least four years in order to have a possibility of getting an ILE visa abroad.

However I shall be delighted if someone can show that my thoughts on this are wrong. Do appreciate that this particular Immigration Rule was introduced only on 01.04.03 and therefore there is not a lot of history in showing how it is interpreted.