Settlement visa delay

[thetmanifesto]

Hello everyone. What a great forum this is, I can only imagine how helpful it has been for many people.

I am just wondering if anyone can help me with regards to contacting someone who can provide me witha a status update for a Fiance visa, the one that allows you to enter the U.K to marry and then apply to 'switch' into the category of wife, husband or civil partner once you are married in the U.K.

My partner submitted her documents at the British embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic on the 02/11/2012 and then received an e-mail from the UK Border Agency in Kingston, Jamaica a week later saying they were now processing my application.

So it has been over 3 months now and as advised by the UK Border agency website, have tried contacting them by filling in the e-mail form through the Worldbridge website, unfortunately this Worldbridge 'service' is just ran by a acomputer that highlights the keywords of your enquiry and responds with automated messages saying that they cannot provide and information regarding visa status updates. I can't for the life of me understand why they are listed on the UK Border agency website as being the people to contact if there is not actually a person that responds.

I have also tried e-mailing the British embassy in Santo Domingo and Kingston the Kingsvisainfo e-mail and the best I have got was another automated out of office reply from the embassy in Kingston stating that they cannot provide information about visa applications either.

I understand that they may not be able to issue all settlement visas within their service standard time of 12 weeks but there should at least be a way to contact somebody who can tell you how much longer you can expect to wait.

Does anybody know of a way to contact anybody that could give me an update on my partners application?

Does anybody know if there have been many delays in the Kingston office?

Thank you

[DieselD]

The delays in issuing a fiance visa vary from country to country. Use this link to see the timeline for your country.

http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/visas ... ing-times/

There are delays. Bear in mind that once you enter into the UK you must marry within 6 months and apply 28 days before the visa expires. The next settlment visa FLR ( M ) can take 9 or more months to process before you are granted temporary settlement. You can not work during fiance and application for FLR (M). As soon as you marry apply for FLR as don't have to wait until there is only 28 days remaining on your fiance visa.

You should read UKBA news as they constantly change the rules.

Good luck and hope you are succesful.

[Casa]

If you apply for FLR(M) in person at a PEO you should have a decision on the day if all your paperwork is in order. This would allow your wife to work immediately the spouse visa is granted.

[Xiaozhu]

Take our advice and DO NOT apply for the FLR(M) (spousal) visa by post... Pay the extra for the same day.

[thetmanifesto]

Thanks for your replies guys.

After sending dozens of e-mails to all the potentially related e-mail adresses that I could find. I did (finally) receive an e-mail from the UKBA in Kingston today saying that further processing time is required and that it should be ready in 15 working days. So I suppose that's something, at least now we are not just waiting, wondering if our application has been lost or not.

Our plans are to get married as soon as possible and apply in person anyway so that we can just get on with life instead of waiting around and putting things on hold.

We had thought about applying in post an waiting for a decision but with the UKBA being in the news recently due to them having a massive backlog of cases, we decided that it would probably be better to apply in person.

Thanks for your advice.

Fingers crossed now for a positive outcome.