Applying for a UK tourist Visa

[AndrewM]

I met a Russian girl during a recent weekend break to Moscow. She works for a wine merchant and there's a wine show in London in May that she'd like to attend. I thought it would be nice if we could combine it with a stay in my hometown, Newcastle.

The Visa application looks fairly straightforward, but my friend says the immigration guys look dimly upon single Russian girls coming to visit single English guys. He says it's likely to be rejected unless she earns loads of money, owns property or has some other reason to keep her in Russia. He argues I should cvonsider not acting as a sponsor for her.

While she has a good job, I'm seriously worried. Can anybody offer me any advice?

[John]

Regretfully I think your friend has summed it up nicely. She will need to provide evidence of "reason to return" and the things you list would help.

So what evidence of "reason to return" would she put forward?

[TintinHerge]

This might be different from your situation but worth a thought anyway:

Its the same case for young Indian guys who want to visit England, just for tourism. The UK Embassy in India sees them as potential settlers , who will go on a tourist visa, work in a Minimum paying job , overstay their visa and keep working till they want to (maybe a year , maybe 10). And its not uncommon for some people to do this , but it wrongly affects the visa application of a genuine tourist too.

There are various ways to try to make the Embassy people confident abt why the person will definitely return back to their original country. A good well-paying job or business(letter from employer or similar), some decent amount of money in the bank , or a property in your name , return flight tickets , hotel bookings , etc but all this does not guarantee a visa. From my past expereince , I think your Russian friend will have a better chance of getting the visa , if she does not mention you in her application. The application should be a simple tourist visa application and a mention of the trade exhibition could also be made.

Please note that I am no immigration expert but have had to visit lots of embassies around the world and so have a good overview abt how they think , sometimes .

Good Luck

[lynn132]

If the wine show is related to her job, it may be worth condiering trying to get a business visitor visa instead of a tourist visa, thus avoiding the issue of her marital status entirely.

[Wanderer]

My gf is russian, and four visas later she's here with me.

She was 21 at the time and so far we have a 100% visa success rate, and you should bear in mind visa rejections from Russia to UK are around 3% so it's by no means impossible!

Two critical things you must provide to ECO:

1. She can afford her stay and not cost UK anything. U can sponsor.

2. She has reason to return, such as letter from employer, property, uni place, bank account, kids etc. Beware these docs can be easily forged, ECO will either know this or not!

In fact I understand now that a courier system is in place whereby trusted agencies can more or less guarantee a visa in the sense they actually do most of the processing, leaving the consulate to spot any oddball ones.

Imagine more cost tho.

last time we were told no interview would be required but in fact it was. We had a 28 yo russian girl staying with us and she had no interview.

Just be honest, if she's romantic interest don't try and hide it, ECO can smell those.

Davai poka!

Steve