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One of my friend married an EU national. They had been living with each other for about 1 year now. They got married in August last year and then applied for EEA Family permit.

The Girl with whom he got married is working as self employed and had given her details and proof of previous earning for my friends application.

My friend, however, received his application back from Home Office after three weeks saying that they need additional evidence for the girl's self employment earnings including Tax returns and accountants letter. She has all of these documents.

Meanwhile, my friends Tier 4 visa is expired. Thing to remember is he got married with this girl before expiry of his visa and even applied before expiry of his visa. The application was not refused but returned with our decision.

Now he came to me, told his complete story and asked for my help. His question was, if he apply for EEA family permit now, will that be awarded to him or will he be classed as over stayer and is likely to be removed from UK.

Please advise....

If he is married to an EEA national then I think it is very very unlikely that he has much reason to worry.

If he is in the UK already, it is a residence card he would apply for on form EEA2, not a family permit.

The only way I could see him being arrested and deported is if the marriage was proven to be bogus to cheat the immigration system.

According to what you tell us, it is a genuine relationship, so he doesn't need to feel scared.

However, UKBA will want proof that the EEA national is exercising treaty rights before issuing residence documents, so that's they want the proof of self-employment, that there is a real job where real work is done and there are real earnings resulting from that work.

It would probably be a good idea if they included longer term proof of the relationship, especially the sharing of bills etc BEFORE AND AFTER the marriage too, as UKBA seem to be increasingly suspicious of marriages where one party to the marriage has a visa that is about to expire - even though there is nothing illegal or wrong with that.