Spouse Visa Query after submission

[sherbaz89]

Hello everyone, my brother applied for the sponsored visa. He got married to a British citizen. She came to Pakistan and both got married in the court. She went back to the UK and then my brother applied for the settlement visa. We hired a uk law firm to do the case of my brother. What all docs the Immigration lawyer asked we provided her. We also paid for th priority service, which allows the case to be decided in 15 working days, to 12 weeks. The lawyer said that my brother’s case is very straight forward they the HO should not have an issue granting him the visa within the time scale. However, 15 working days passed and then my brother asked the lawyer to send the HO a letter asking for an update. The lawyer said that there is no point sending them update letters as we are still in 12 week deadline so it’s up to the HO discretion to reply to us, as long as they are within this 12 week deadline. After a couple of weeks more, when my brother did not get any reply to the letter, he emailed the HO, for which he paid £5 and asked for an update, a week ago he received reply to that email saying that he will have his decision by th 23rd October. He received an email today, saying that unfortunately the processing of the case has not been ‘straight forward and that they will not be able to deal with the case within the time scale.

His 12 weeks deadline will finish on the 31 of October 2017.

Now my questions are:

1: Shall we question the lawyer as to why she kept on saying that the case was straight forward, when it was not? Shouldn’t she as an immigration lawyer HVE known that the case is not straight forward? When we asked her about this she said that it’s a waiting game now and we are not the only one in this position. Is this answer justified?

2: We are very much sure that we fulfilled all eligibility criteria for the visa to be granted than why my brother has received this email? Is there a possibility that the lawyer made a pathatic application? And how can we check that?

3: When they said that a decision should be made by 23rd October, why they sent an email saying that it’s not a straight forward case? Then how come they knew that a decision will be made by 23rd if the case was not straight forward? Is the lawyer at fault for this?

5: How long are they going to take after this email? And what has been the outcome for people who HVE recived same emails?

6: Is there anyway we can ask them to escalate the matter and ask for explanation as to why they think the case is not straight forward, when everything was provided to them, nothing missing, illegal or wrong?

Guys my brother has gone into anxiety since he had this email as he has so many things just hung over, due to this application, so please please please I beg you to advice me what to do and who to contact? Please help me. I’m very much in need of your suggestions, advices and directions. Any direct contacts we can make?