I am a Briitish citizen and my partner is South African. Two years ago she applied to come to the UK on a working holiday visa. We had met when she first visited the UK in 2006. To cut a long story short she applied for the WHV as we wanted to spend longer together so we could decide whether we wanted to get married and spend the rest of lives together.
So she applied for the WHV and it was refused on extremely spurious grounds. We decided to appeal but desperately wanted to see each other (it had been a year since we had last been together) and so she decided to come to the UK as a tourist (she intended to return after six months). On her way here she was returned to South Africa as she transitted through Dubai. Please note it was not UK immigration that returned her but Emirates Airline security. They said that she didn't have entry clearance and so would be refused entry to the UK on arrival. This is despite the fact that she didn't need entry clearance at the time as South African's were non-visa nationals.
In retrospect i understand why Emirates returned her - they didn't want to be fined when she was refused entry into the UK (which i now know was almost certain to happen). We were desperate to see each other and so our judgement was clouded.
In the end the ECO in Pretoria issued the visa without it getting to appeal - ours is one of the rare cases where they realised they had got it wrong and decided to cut their losses.
My partner has now been here nearly two years and we will be getting married in January. Will this incident in Dubai adversely affect our chances of getting the spouse's visa? There is no visible mark in her passport but we don't want to lie and leave the incident off the form - if the deception were uncovered the visa would certainly be refused.
Basically, i guess i'm looking for reassurance (aren't we all when it comes to visas?).
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