Res.Card for non-EU family member of EU national

Hi all u immigration experts out there. After long fight with UK Visas my spouse was finally granted EEA family permit and arrived back in the UK.

We submitted an application for her residence card first time sometimes in June 2007 but because she had to go back to her country in September she had to withdraw her passport before BIA issued her with res. card. (then we had a long fight with UK Visas but that is another story) Now she is back in the UK and we resubmitted our passports back to BIA.
To our huge surprise we received a letter now asking for more documents to be submitted. The letter says because I am Accession State national (Slovakia) I must have been in employment for 12 months before my wife can apply for residence card.
Well, what can I say, I have been here for 3 years and was issued with Residence Card for EEA state national 2 years ago. I have been registered under workers registration scheme the first year and then as soon as I was eligible I obtained residence card.

Seems like BIA does not take this into consideration and still asking for my payslips for the past 12 months, my workers registration card and my WRS certificates in spite of the fact that they have my residence card and my passport with them.

I totally do not understand because according to UK law I completed 12 months employment under WRS and subsequently obtained Res.card. Since that moment I have not been required to register with new employers and I am free of work restrictions.

Is Home Office right to be asking for my last 12 months payslips? To be honest I only have payslips for the past 10 months from my current job and dumped all previous payslips from my previous job. Is this likely to be a problem? or any other ideas as what this is all about? Due to Home Office's (and UK Visas) inefficiency me and my wife have not got a chance to travel anywhere since we got married in May (not even to go for our honeymoon) because our passports are with Home Office all the time. I am fed up and want to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

waiting for your opinions.......

I think you need to appreciate that your wife, that is, your family member, only has EU rights in the UK if you are exercising EU rights in the UK. Accordingly I do actually think that it is reasonable if they ask for payslips to prove that you continue to exercise your EU Treaty Rights.

However, having said that, whoever wrote that letter clearly did not look at the available evidence. I think you should point out that there is a sticker in the passport proving that you are no longer subject to the WRS.

yeah.....I have mentioned the fact in my cover letter on several occasions already + they have my residence card (it is not a sticker this time but rather separate card issued by Home Office)

pedroramos999 wrote:To our huge surprise we received a letter now asking for more documents to be submitted. The letter says because I am Accession State national (Slovakia) I must have been in employment for 12 months before my wife can apply for residence card.

Don't take that the letter too serious. I think they have a number of templates, and they usually send them poorly edited.

Is Home Office right to be asking for my last 12 months payslips? To be honest I only have payslips for the past 10 months from my current job and dumped all previous payslips from my previous job.

Difficult to say. As long as you can prove your employment some other way (bank statements, tax returns), that should not be a problem.

Due to Home Office's (and UK Visas) inefficiency me and my wife have not got a chance to travel anywhere since we got married in May (not even to go for our honeymoon) because our passports are with Home Office all the time.

You can always try to sue them because they took longer than 6 months. But you need to demonstrate losses due to their negligence.