I am an Indian national & had applied for a UK visit visa in 2000 while I was a student. I have to admit I was a bit naive at the time & had no clue about how to go about applying for a visa. Basically I pitched up at the embassy with a letter sent to me by an aquiantance who had stated that he was happy to support me whilst I am here. The trouble was that it was just on his letter pad & was not notarised by a solicitor, for example. I also did not have his bank details or a bank account of my own & had no way to prove that I had suficcient funds to finance my trip. What I did have was a plane ticket, which I bought for a discount from a family friend who worked in the aviation industry.
I got the sense that the lady conducting the interview was very negatively predisposed to my application right from the onset. She took up issue with my passport, which was genuine but badly made & had stains around & behind the photo. She suggested that it had been tampered with (which wasn`t true anyway) My visa was duely refused & I did not bother to appeal & left it at that.
Three years later, I applied again for a tourist visa, this time with proper documetation & a new passport with a scanned photo (my other passpor had expired by then) &, after an interview where we very briefly went over the reasons for the previous refusal, I was granted a visa. I have been working in this country in a professional capacity for about 4 years & would be eligible for ILR next year.
Now, in January of this year, I was asked by the immigration officer in Stansted on my return from Germany whether I had been refused a UK visa in the past. I gave her an honest answer & she said that 'its on the system' & asked me for the reasons for the refusal. I have to admit I could not clearly remember the reasons stated on the refusal letter & told her that it was for something like lack of documents or whatever. She said that she would put in a request to the home office to erase the entry as I have been legally present in the country for many years now.
I was asked again about the visa refusal by immigration yesterday (this time by a foreign lady who could barely speak English herself) & was asked questions about the refusal again. I did get a bit anxious during the chat as I was aware that the ECO in the embassy had suspected a photo switch or something back in 2000 & have heard horror stories going around about identity fraud for passports & such like. I asked her why she was asking me these questions when this incident related to the past & had no relevance to my current stay in the country, she gave me the stock answer that 'its on the system' When I remarked that I would hopefully not be asked such questions once, she said 'you never know',as if she knew something that I did not.
Since 2003, I have extended my stay 4 times, all in this country i.e. my tourist visa briefly, my work permit, extension of my work permit & HSMP, without any problems whatsoever.I have not made any false statements to obtain my visa or extend my stay but I realise my application in 2000 was amateurish,to say the least. So why do they keep asking me about my visa refusal in 2000? Is it just routine immigration harrassment or something else? Why did I not have this problem until 2006, as I travelled abroad atleast 15 times prior to that without problems? Now I am worried whether the HO would use this against me when I apply for ILR & naturalisation in the future?
Any suggestions/reassurances welcome
