Any official guidance on queue to join at border for non-EU spouse?

[chssvi]

Hi all,

I became a British citizen and got my UK passport earlier this year. My non-EU wife, however, has decided to just stay with her current ILR. We had read some conflicting information about which queue to join next time we entered the country (see for example https://travel.stackexchange.com/questi ... ontrol-tog) so when we arrived from holiday at Gatwick earlier in the year we just asked the person before border control and she told us that we could use the EU/EEA queue. No problem there. A couple of months later we arrived at Heathrow T2, we asked again and were told to join the EU/EEA queue. Again, no problem.

Believing that this was the official policy, a month later we arrived at Luton and, without asking, went straight to the EU/EEA queue where a rather rude immigration officer told me that "my lady friend" should have gone to the other queue for non EU/EEA. I told him that she was my wife and that we had already used the EU/EEA line at Heathrow and Gatwick but he just replied that it didn't matter and that each airport had its own policy. He still processed us but not without telling us off.

Last month we arrived at Stansted and decided to ask again before joining the queue. This time we were told that both of us should join the non-EU/EEA queue.

Is it possible that the UKBA has an airport-specific policy? Seems rather arbitrary that we have to join whatever queue they feel like rather than there being a clear policy on how to process families consisting of UK and non-UK citizens.

Thanks

[secret.simon]

A three year old thread on another forum site also suggests that it is an airport by airport policy rather than a uniform policy. That thread suggested that Manchester Airport allows ILR holders to use the British/EU citizens queue, but that is not the case elsewhere.

The logic I would use on deciding the queue to use is that the British/EU queue should be used by people whose right to reside in the UK does not need to be verified. So, holders of British and EU passports and identity cards and holders of Article 10/20 Residence Cards issued by any EEA member state.

In such a queue, all the Border Force officer has to do is open the passport and verify the identity of the person. Their right to enter the UK is undisputed because of the specific document (passport/identity card/residence card) they carry.

The Other nationalities queue should be used by anybody who has leave to enter the UK. Such leave needs to be manually verified on the systems. Also, the Border Force officer may ask questions to ascertain the purpose of the entry into the UK to verify if the circumstances of the leave have changed, thus invalidating it.

Thus, in the British/EU Citizens queue, there is no question of the person being allowed into the UK and the Border Force Officer exercises no judgment. In the Other nationalities queue, the Border Force officer does have the power to review the leave that the person purports to have and thus does need to exercise judgment.

If it is a couple travelling together (such as a British citizen and their non-EEA spouse), I would suggest either splitting and going individually into the two separate queues or going into the non-EEA queue, that of the less privileged spouse.

At the end of the day, the queue system is more for the convenience of the Border Force officials. They are duty-bound to process you even if you were in the wrong queue. But it makes their job routine harder.

[secret.simon]

I had a much simpler explanation dawn on me (my coffee is not obviously strong enough today morning); can the person use the e-passport gates at the airport?

A person who can use the e-passport gates goes to the EEA queue, all others to the non-EEA queue. The logic still remains the same; the e-passport gate verifies your identity and lets you through as there is no need to check the right to enter the UK.

Obviously there are exceptions to this over-simplified rule; EEA Residence Card holders and CoE-RoA holders go to the EEA queue as well.

But also see post 71 of this thread.