Loophole? Avoid returning home to apply for a spouse visa

[OL7MAX]

Married to a British national and want to apply for ILR as a spouse? The traditional advice is to return to your home nation and apply for the relevant visa. But if there are factors that make it difficult/expensive to return to your home country... is the below a possibilty?

Apply for "ILR" in an EC country like Ireland or France on the grounds that you are married to an EC national. They are likely to grant you residence in their country. And isn't that all you need to live and work legally in the UK?

I could be completely wrong on this, of course, as I'm sure someone will point out in due course

[Jeff Albright]

Married to a British national and want to apply for ILR as a spouse? The traditional advice is to return to your home nation and apply for the relevant visa.

"Traditional" advice? Not at all.
You can only apply for the ILR as a spouse if you have been on the "spouse" visa or Leave to Remain in the UK as a spouse.
Whether or not you can switch to Leave to Remain as a "spouse" to someone who is a UK citizen or settled here depends on your status in the UK at the moment of your application. In some capacities you can, in some you cannot. If your spouse is the EC national the rules are a little different but still you cannot get the ILR as a spouse straight away.

But if there are factors that make it difficult/expensive to return to your home country...

I am afraid this is something that no one cares about as far as the Immigration Rules are concerned except the situation when your country is at war or you had been persecuted/tortured in the past, which is very very difficult to prove nowadays.

Apply for "ILR" in an EC country like Ireland or France on the grounds that you are married to an EC national. They are likely to grant you residence in their country. And isn't that all you need to live and work legally in the UK?

I guess it varies from country to country and you need to check that with each individual country you are considering. But if your spouse is the UK citizen/settled it does not make sense to make your life that much complicated.

[John]

Are you just getting confused .... or confusing the rest of us? :-

Married to a British national and want to apply for ILR as a spouse? The traditional advice is to return to your home nation and apply for the relevant visa.

What exactly do you mean? If the person already has their spouse visa, the "traditional advice" is not to return to your home nation. You simply apply for your ILR in the UK.

And if someone is indeed married to a British national .... and living in the UK already .... ordinarily they would apply for all the visas they need ... in the UK! That is, if they needed a Certificate of Approval to Marry ("CoA") in the UK then conversion to a spouse visa in the UK is entirely possible.

The problems only tend to arise where the marriage in the UK was prior to the need to obtain a CoA was introduced, 01.02.05, but after the date when the "no switching" rule came in ... 01.04.03. Such spouses will invariably need to return to their home country to obtain their spouse visa if they did not have a visa longer than six months or a fiancé(e) visa.

But the introduction the CoA legislation means that those who can get married in the UK are invariably able to switch to a spouse visa in the UK.

[OL7MAX]

My apologies for not explaining it well. Actually, I probably am confused. Please close this thread.