Advice required

[dubliner2ie]

Hi all, long time lurker, first time posting.

I am looking for advice in my situation, met my fiance online over 4 years ago, friends at first but in June 2010 decided to enter a long distance relationship. She is from the Philippines.

We have met face to face 6 times since then and she came to ireland for 3 months on a tourist visa in the summer. We got engaged in the summer.

While she was here we consulted a solicitor to discuss our options, she advised applying for a join partner visa based on our relationship was over 2 years old and we could say we were in a de facto relationship.

So my fiance went back to Philippines just before the tourist visa was up.

She submitted her application at the Irish consulate in Manila.

We submitted a lot of emails, photos, copied of passports with visa stamps showing the face to face meetings, phone bills, receipts, boarding passes etc.

Her visa application was rejected and the reason given was

Does not meet qualifying criteria for a Join Partner visa.

We have appealed the decision and are awaiting that.

So I have 2 questions

have we applied for the wrong Visa

And if the appeal is not succesfull is the visa refusal held against her in future visa applications.

Thanks for any advice given.

[frei]

In your refusal did you ask on what grounds you did not meet the requirement for a join spouse? Surely you were suppose to qualify for a de facto visa? if the appeal is upheld which I think should normally not be the case. It is not a procedure of most countries that I know of to hold previous visa refusal against applicants, they usually say every application is decided on it's merit, I doubt this would be the case for Ireland. In any case, wait for the appeal am sure it will be successful, albeit you might have to wait for a considerable amount of time, but should be successful in the end.

[dubliner2ie]

Thanks for your reply, we asked when we filed the appeal what where the grounds we did not meet. I hope it would be successful but I just do not know what will happen.

[Brigid from Ireland]

You could go to her home country and marry her there.
Then bring her back with you to a county other than the Republic of Ireland (the usual choice is Northern Ireland.) A spouse has many rights, much better than a partner.

[dubliner2ie]

How would that work?
I live and work in the Republic so I presume to bring her to the North after we married I would have to be living and working in the North.
I am not in a position to be able to walk away from a mortgage and my job here and to try and find a job in the North.

[Brigid from Ireland]

Hi Dubliner2ie,

I am not familiar with your circumstances. Some people have no job/are in a position to move/can take a career break.

Basically one way to bring over a non-Eu partner is to trigger EU migrant worker rights. This means you move from Ireland to any EU country, work for six months there and then move back to Ireland and work here. Each time you move you trigger migrant worker rights, so long as you work. One of these rights is the right to have your spouse join you.

Obviously this does not work if you have a job/mortgage in Ireland.

[ImmigrationLawyer]

Hi, my advice is to provide as much evidence as possible of your relationship, and finances/ ties to Ireland such as job, mortgage etc. You should state why it would not be possible for you to live in the Philippines. If refused you should seek advice of a solicitor to judicially review the decision. The visa offices should not be allowed get away with refusing on arbitrary or "fixed policy" reasons, when they do not inform applicants of their criteria and policy considerations.
The other posters are correct, too though that a married couple has more rights than an unmarried couple in Ireland.
Good luck.