Residence Document or Permanent? Help needed asap

[confused european]

Hi
I am a French National living in the Uk since Aug 2003 and married my non-eu husband in a reglious event in August 2003 and gotten married at the register in April 2004. We applied for the EEA resident permit in April 2004.
It took the Home Office (H.O) until August 2004 to give us a resident permit until Oct 2004 because I was on a short contract. Then in September 2004 we send off the documents again to ask for an extension as I was still "actively seeking employment".
At the end of September I had was offered a Job which was to last until March 2006. As soon as I received the contract in September I sent off it to the HO and it wasn't until the Feb. 05, after numerous emails and even getting our local MP involved did I finally get back our documents.
Believe it or not instead of giving us the remainder of the 5 year EEA family permit we were given until the end of my contract. Even though I specified in the application that we were planning to live in the UK permanently.

Now the time has arrived for us to extend it again and I was wondering if we could apply for the indefinite or permanent basis? Also my husband has been in the UK since Sept 1998 on a student visa and I wanted to know if we could use this to our advantage i.e apply for a ILR on this basis?
Also we are currently in the french naturalisation process and this will end hopefully 3 years since our civil marriage in April 2007 and I wanted to know if we could both apply for a British whilst maintaing our french identity?
Hope somebody can clarify this?
TA
Confused European

[JAJ]

Hi
I am a French National living in the Uk since Aug 2003 and married my non-eu husband in a reglious event in August 2003 and gotten married at the register in April 2004. We applied for the EEA resident permit in April 2004.
It took the Home Office (H.O) until August 2004 to give us a resident permit until Oct 2004 because I was on a short contract. Then in September 2004 we send off the documents again to ask for an extension as I was still "actively seeking employment".
At the end of September I had was offered a Job which was to last until March 2006. As soon as I received the contract in September I sent off it to the HO and it wasn't until the Feb. 05, after numerous emails and even getting our local MP involved did I finally get back our documents.
Believe it or not instead of giving us the remainder of the 5 year EEA family permit we were given until the end of my contract. Even though I specified in the application that we were planning to live in the UK permanently.

Now the time has arrived for us to extend it again and I was wondering if we could apply for the indefinite or permanent basis? Also my husband has been in the UK since Sept 1998 on a student visa and I wanted to know if we could use this to our advantage i.e apply for a ILR on this basis?
Also we are currently in the french naturalisation process and this will end hopefully 3 years since our civil marriage in April 2007 and I wanted to know if we could both apply for a British whilst maintaing our french identity?
Hope somebody can clarify this?
TA
Confused European

Once you've been in the UK for 5 years (it's being increased from 4 years), you can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain. After 1 further year in the UK (at least 5 years in total), you can apply for British citizenship.

Your husband can apply for an EEA permit once his French citizenship is granted, once he has 10 years legal residence in the UK he can go for ILR on that basis. If you have British citizenship by then, he can apply for British citizenship immediately as he'd have ILR plus a total of 3 years legal residence in the UK.

You should check with the French authorities to be sure, but as far as I know if you're French and take out British citizenship, then you keep French citizenship too!

Becoming naturalised British may mean you wouldn't be able to use non-domiciled tax concessions to shelter non-UK income, but this may not be important to you when compared to the rights of being a British citizen.

Have you got any children born in the UK, or are you planning to have children in future?

[/u]

[John]

Becoming naturalised British may mean you wouldn't be able to use non-domiciled tax concessions to shelter non-UK income

JAJ, I normally agree with all you say but sorry, I can't agree with that. The nationality a person has is only one issue in deciding their tax domicile. Another issue might be whether they have given up their other nationality, or not.

Domicile is a very difficult concept to grasp, especially as regards a Domicile of Choice, and indeed whether someone has actually exercised a Domicile of Choice, or indeed not.

[John]

Confused European, I agree with JAJ, neither you nor your husband qualify yet to apply for Permanent Residence.

Accordingly you need to make an application on form EEA1, and your husband should use form EEA2. (In view of the fact that the IND website continues to have serious lack-of-speed problems, I have uploaded the forms to the internet for your benefit, and speedy download.)

[JAJ]

JAJ, I normally agree with all you say but sorry, I can't agree with that. The nationality a person has is only one issue in deciding their tax domicile. Another issue might be whether they have given up their other nationality, or not.
.

There's something to this effect in the future intentions section of the Nationality Instructions on s6(1) naturalisation. I don't know how true it is or not, I do know of a few cases where people with ILR in the UK (not married to British citizens) don't naturalise ostensibly for this reason.

It's not necessarily a good idea to turn down naturalisation for fiscal reasons, but some people do so. The Government is also remiss, there is something "not right" about allowing those with permanent resident status in the UK (and hence full access to UK social benefits) to effectively live under a different tax regime.

[confused european]

thank you very much for the response guys and also for uploading the documents
I just wanted to know if you are also aware if my husband can apply for a french nationality after 1 year regardless of residency. I keep on seeing this over the internet but I am not to sure as we already have the french family card and we were told of this option.
Many thanks

[supertiger]

Confused European, are you sure yr husband can declare french nationality after 1 year or 3 years of the marriage? as my finance is french national ( am non-EU), I was checking some french rules, it seems that takes 3 years. Meanwhile we were thinking to marry out of france, but seems that french consulate don;t accept local registration directly we still need to go through the french procudure to get a livre de famille. Getting married in france should be easier but I am working in London and partner is travelling between UK and a third country at the moment. I need to stay in france for at least a month before the registratration, don;t really have the time to do so... Do you have any suggestions?

[confused european]

Hi super tiger
Basically you do not have to live in France to get married. what we did is gotten married at our local registry office and this union was witnessed by the local council and we submitted our documents to the French consular who accepted as the UK is still part of the EU and also after a couple of months my husband got included in the livret famille. But beforehand I had to register with the Consular as every french national must do. So it shouldn't be a problem. The reason why we did it in the UK is because my husband could not travel to france due to work and visa problems.
At first I thought it was 3 years I had to wait but lately I was surfing through the net and it kept on popping out that it took a year. This was strange as the current Prime minister in France has recently tightened up the immigration rules. So if you did find any info on this please post it.
TA
Hope I helped in some way

[supertiger]

Confused European thanks. I also saw some online information saying it takes 1 year to declare but all current french consulate website states it needs 3 years for the nationality so I think that must be official. They can give a 10 year long stay visa after 1 year...

As for our marriage, if we marry here in UK then I need to apply a license from Home Office due to their new Control the Border strategy, it costs £375 takes up to 13 weeks to process and still doesn;t guarantee approval. I feel it is absolutely obsurd and not willing to donate anything to HO especially recent policy change affected me... so we thought to register in my home country as we will be living there eventually but again the procedure can take forever as I live in uk then they have to do the publication de bans in 3 different countries. Any idea how long it may take?

"...Une fois le dossier complet, l'officier de l'état civil procédera ? une "publication de bans" ? l'Ambassade, ainsi qu’? la mairie du domicile du futur conjoint fran?ais s'il réside en France et n'est que de passage en Chine, ou bien encore, s'il est domicilié dans un pays étranger (hors Chine) aupr?s de la représentation diplomatique fran?aise de ce pays. Les futurs époux doivent savoir que cette procédure peut nécessiter de longs délais et prévoir la célébration de leur mariage en conséquence."

[confused european]

HI Supertiger
Thanks for the info, I am really shocked about the huge payment just for the license. I mean maybe we were ignorant and we did it back in April 2004, and all we did was register with the local council who checked our documents and gave us the ok, then after we got married we took all our documents with the marriage certificate to the french consular who gave us an interview and after they took it 5-6 weeks later we got the livret famille. As we were going to stay in the UK for a couple of years there was no stress but with the HO it is a nightmarer just to get a residence document. So maybe once we restart with the french consular it might also be a nightmare.
Try and find a french immigration lawyer, we was lucky as there was a lawyer who was offering for a limited time to check that all our documents was in place or best place would be your local free law centre
All the best

[davidm]

There's something to this effect in the future intentions section of the Nationality Instructions on s6(1) naturalisation. I don't know how true it is or not, I do know of a few cases where people with ILR in the UK (not married to British citizens) don't naturalise ostensibly for this reason.

It's not necessarily a good idea to turn down naturalisation for fiscal reasons, but some people do so. The Government is also remiss, there is something "not right" about allowing those with permanent resident status in the UK (and hence full access to UK social benefits) to effectively live under a different tax regime.

I had examined this situation before naturalisation and was advised by my accountant that I will be resident, ordinarily resident and non-domiciled even after naturalisation as I still keep strong ties with my "home" country and hence will not be liable to pay UK taxes on my non-UK income- at least until Inland Revenue changes its interpretation. Very unlikely as there are lots of folks like Lord Ashcroft, Lord Levy etc. who have used this argument to save UK taxes.
The interpreation of non-dom status is vague - I know a chap who has used the argument that he has a family funeral plot in Poland to show that he has strong ties to Poland and hence is non-domiciled- despite the fact that his parents migrated to the UK in 1952 and he was born here and never set foot in Poland until 1992. The revenue accepted his argument.