Applying for a visit visa for Grandmother

[bibekpd]

Hi all,

First post in this forum so apologies if I miss out any details. I will try to be as detailed as I can.

My dad (naturalised British citizen) is the only child of my grandmother and after my grandfather passed away a while back we wanted to apply for my grandmother to join us here in the UK. She had previously been to the UK as a visitor and had gone back to Nepal before her visa expired so no problems there.

My dad unfortunately went to this horrible firm (xxxxxxxxxxx) who are supposedly experts in immigration law who advised him to apply for a visit visa then once she was in the UK to apply for a visa to stay here with us. Before you say anything, now we know this is an absolute no no.

Anyways, she came as a visitor in 2015 October and we started the process early 2016 and our reasons to keep her here were that her health had declined and she had no immediate family members back home to look after her, give her medications and so on.

Her application got refused ( I am not sure what the exact grounds were) but this said firm suggested we should appeal under ECHR article 8. After spending a fair amount of money and proceeding with the appeal it was rejected by the first tier tribunal. We asked for a permission to appeal at the upper tribunal around march 2017 which was also rejected.

Now the most important part, around end of may we received a letter from the home office stating we had exhausted our appeal rights and my grandmother was asked to sign in at reporting centre every fortnight until she was told when she had to leave the country. Despite me advising against it, my dad paid some more money to this firm who told him they would contact home office on our behalf and assured him that due to my grandmother's age and poor health, she didn't have to travel to the reporting centre to sign in. Mean while we were told they would prepare to go to high court as it was the next route for the appeals process.

Fast forward to August 2017, immigration officers show up at our family home and inform us that my grandmother was now classed as an absconder for not turning up to the reporting centre to sign in and surprise surprise the firm has sent them no correspondence regarding our situation so to them we had basically ignored the letter asking my grandmother to go and sign-in fortnightly. We paid for the flights ourselves and my dad and my grandmother left the same morning to go back to Nepal.

I am due to get married end of April and would really like her to be here with me as I grew up with my grandparents and am quite close to her. I am not 100% sure if she is classed as an overstayer as she was appealing the decision however since receiving the letter from the home office for her to sign in at the reporting centre, she left the country within 90 days which I believe means she is not subject to the automatic 1 year ban. Due to her immigration history however I feel that the chance of her being given another visit visa to join me during my wedding is quite slim. My dad has now technically retired early so if she were to come and visit us here again, he would be going back with her to Nepal to look after her.

I want to submit a visit visa application just to see what happens but would really appreciate any advice on if any covering letter or grounds I can submit with her application that would get the visa officer to give s careful consideration to her application rather than just rejecting it due to her history.

As for the firm, they have ignored all our complaint emails and would like to pursue it further as they have failed providing services promised (e.g. translator not being present during the first tier tribunal hearing when we specifically requested one , poor quality of statements etc) but thats for another thread. Google reviews will show how horrible these firms are.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[CR001]

1. Kindly do not post names of solicitor firms on the forum as we could be liable for a libel case.

I am not 100% sure if she is classed as an overstayer as she was appealing the decision however since receiving the letter from the home office for her to sign in at the reporting centre, she left the country within 90 days which I believe means she is not subject to the automatic 1 year ban.

She was an overstayer.

Due to her immigration history however I feel that the chance of her being given another visit visa to join me during my wedding is quite slim. My dad has now technically retired early so if she were to come and visit us here again, he would be going back with her to Nepal to look after her.

Her chance of getting a visitor visa is virtually zero. Stating her intention to settle in the UK and being refused, absconding etc has shut the visit visa door for her.

I want to submit a visit visa application just to see what happens but would really appreciate any advice on if any covering letter or grounds I can submit with her application that would get the visa officer to give s careful consideration to her application rather than just rejecting it due to her history.

She would be considered high risk and will almost certainly be refused.

[bibekpd]

Apologies CR001, and thank you for a prompt response.

Not the reply I was hoping for but was expecting.

Probably a good idea to save my self £90 and not bother applying by the sounds of it. It's going to be painful to break the news to my family that she won't be joining us for the wedding.