Waited 3 years, any advice?

[Prawn]

Hi,

My Girlfriend and I applied for a unmarried partners visa while waiting for a student visa appeal to be herd, obviously this appeal was denied as it was no longer a student visa that was reqired (i found out after that the laywer should not have let the appeal continue after we applied for a different visa) so she has remained in the UK while waiting for the outcome of the unmarried partner visa.

We have been waiting nearly 3 years for a decision and I have contacted various people including the local MP who has written to the home office on numerous occasions. The only response or information I can get from the home office is that our application is awaiting further consideration (this has not changed since the application was submitted nearly 3 years ago!)

I am english work full time and have been supporting us both for the 3 years we have been waiting and we have now been living togeather for nearly 5 years and the girlfriend is from China

Does anyone know of anything i can do to speed up or even talk to some that will discuss the application?

Is anyone else having this problem?

Any help or advice on this would be most appricated, She is considering going back to China and reapplying Ibelive this is a bad idea at the moment we are togeather at least, and whos to say it may take just as long from there.

Cheers

Scott

[Jeff Albright]

Scott,

Your best bet is to request a copy of her file by writing to Data Protection Unit, enclosing £10 and waiting for 40 days. The information where to write and further details is on BIA website.

Once she has her file, she will be able to determine its whereabouts at BIA - this is the most important piece of information. It is essential to establish which department holds the file.

After that you simply write directly to the Operations Manager of that unit and you will normally get response either personally from them or from the director of the Directorate within a week or so. Once the communication is established you make a request to give the case a priority and the case is put in front of a caseworker for action. Then the caseworker will either write to you asking for additional information or if they have all the information required - they will make a decision and inform you in writing. That's it. I personally used this way twice and it worked fantastically.

[avjones]

when she applied for the unmarried partner visa, did she have current leave?

[Jeff Albright]

Apparently, she did from what Scott said.
Student visa was denied with the right of appeal, hence the applicatin was probably made on time. When submitted an unmarried partner's application while appeal was pending, the latter was treated as abandoned and she has had an application outstanding ever since. Perfectly legal, from what I can see.

[avjones]

Hi Jeff - I don't think it works like that. WHile leave carries on under the 1971 Act while an appeal is outstanding, it doesn't entitle the person to make another application and abandon the first as if leave was still current.

[Prawn]

Thanks for the interest guys.

When the unmarried partner was applied for we were indeed waiting an appeal date, however the lawyer did not abandon the appeal as i am told he should have, instead the appeal went ahead and was denied which did not suprise me as we didnt want that type of visa anymore.

[Jeff Albright]

Hi Jeff - I don't think it works like that. WHile leave carries on under the 1971 Act while an appeal is outstanding, it doesn't entitle the person to make another application and abandon the first as if leave was still current.

I will need to look into the Act more carefully to see what exactly it says... Cannot think of anything that would prohibit any applicant from making an application under these circumstances. Although, I agree that if they had found an application to be void, they would not have informed the applicant - it is wrong but I definitely know one case when this happened - the person applied under the 14 years rule, then heard nothing for 4 years, got a copy of his file and found that the application was actually treated as void (because the enforcement action was initiated a long time ago but never proceeded and he did not know he was ineligible because of that)
I also have read through a few AIT cases where appellants were eligible to have their status regularised under DP3/96 or DP5/96 at the time of the hearing and the Immigration Judge remitted case back to the IND for consideration under these policies.

The main advice to Scott - get a copy of her file from the BIA as soon as possible and then let us know what is recorded on it in respect to that application as an unmarried partner and the current whereabouts of the file.