Spouse Visa - Can anyone share a recent expereice?

[gah2000]

Hi,

Am a British citizen. I got married on 19 June 2017. My wife went to the VFS office in Mumbai on 23rd and she was asked to come back (at an additional cost of INR 2500) because she had henna on her hand due to which bio metric was not done. She was also handed a letter from the Home Office to inform her that all documents need to go across to Sheffield, something that's not clearly specified on both VFS and Gov.uk site. If you search, you find it. We've been hearing all kinds of stories re rejections.

Has anyone applied for a spouse settlement visa (India) in the last 2 months? Can they share there experience/knowledge? Does anyone know if bank statements, salary slips from the UK have to be attested for submitting to the Sheffield office? Any information would be helpful.

Many thanks.

[mb7891]

Hi

Yes this is the new process since the new year, here is the link on the VFS website

http://www.vfsglobal.co.uk/india/pdf/In ... icants.pdf

If they are originals then no need to attest these. My payslips were e-payslips i printed these off and included a letter from my employer saying that they use e-payslips along confirming my employment details.

Also my bank statements were requested over the phone and sent in the post.

[Laksmi Gonzalez]

Hi,

I applied on the end of May. You are right the website is not clear at all, but yes the documents have to be sent directly to Sheffield. It supposed to be easy because the documents will be sent by the British citizen right?, except for the fact that the site was not updated until recently and the information was contradictory. Another important thing I noticed, is that the processing times CHANGED in that website and now, when you pay for Priority Visa (which we did), it only says that the application will go "in front of the queue" , you actually have no idea, how many applications are ahead of you, and how many of them have also paid priority visas, and no matter if you call or write (which we did), they will not give you any processing time, the only answer we got was:

"We aim to complete 90% of NON-SETTLEMENTS applications within 3 weeks, 98% within 6 weeks and 100% within 12 weeks of the application date (where 1 week is 5 working days) and 95% of SETTLEMENTS applications within 12 weeks of the application date and 100% within 24 weeks of the application date (where 1 week is 5 working days). "

So that is basically two or three months, I have checked other forums and yes since April, May their SETTLEMENT applications were approved withing 45 working days or more. JUST the ones who paid priority visa. Those that haven't is taking longer. I found curious this started to happen from April, before that, I saw many applications for settlement, with priority service paid, were approved within 15 working days, as they used to promised before.

Hope this information is useful.

[gah2000]

Thanks all for the prompt response. Appreciate it.