It's worrying and it looks like things have just taken a turn for the worse, based on the Administrator's latest comments.

Damn, did I post it in the wrong area? Sorry, administrator, it's here.

Messages I send sometimes seem to have not been sent and are sitting in my outbox days later. I send them again, it looks like they have gone but when I don't get a reply I check and they are in my outbox again! I've got two message in my outbox now that are just refusing to go anywhere. Also, I rec...

Erring on the side of caution is providing them with the proof they want without giving them more information about personal, private matters than they need to have access to. IMHO, you don't cater your application to the goodness or otherwise of the people handling it. There's law and there are gui...

paulp, the question really is whether the HO uses a different yardstick/criteria for measuring financial independence in 5 vs 14.

Bank statements that show the applicant always in the red are less likely to show that he can support himself, IMHO. Suggestion: Get a Chartered Accountant to sign an income/expenditure breakdown. Let's put it this way - I didn't send bank statements even though they show healthy figures. And mine w...

I'm a strong believer of not sending more than you need to. If, as Dawie says, it's solely to assess income - show they your tax returns for the last x years. My 14 year application was recently approved. I went against my solicitor's advice and refused to send personal bank statements. I don't trus...

If your account balance is not required for considering of your application I would urge you to leave it out. I was in a similar position to you a year ago. I went against my solicitor's strongly worded advice on bank statements. She wanted every single one for the last x years. I instructed her to ...

fczenit, on double checking the dates between my application and the date on the letter, it was only 9 months to approval . I'm stunned by their speed on this as I was always under the impression that all 14 year applications took years. During that time they sent no correspondence to me or my solic...

Hey, I'm getting to go home, bring on anything :) PS: Relating to my earlier advice about following useful links here - you may find that many of the links to the Home Office site don't work as it's now the BIA. However, check out the internet archive at archive.org. They maintain copies of how page...

I would have to prove that in order to gain entry clearance, i can support myself and my child without recourse to public funds.

Can you prove that? Bung me a PM if you can't.

FWIW, Twin, I've realised that you can't rely on solicitors' knowledge. You've been doing the right thing in researching it all yourself. Sadly, despite the huge amounts we pay solitictors our interests are best served by prodding them all the time."Why can't I use this ppron method?" or &...

I've replied to several PMs and sent PMs to those requesting lawyer details. I must add, though, that it is my opinion that no matter who your lawyer is ... it is up to you to make sure they're on the right track. And, there's no resource like this forum for that. It's from here that I learnt about ...

Hmmm, if you're into history and culture there've got to be one or two things to see in the UK, granted. I'm glad you're happy here. It's nice to see something different from the usual moans (I'm chief mourner! )

Judy, what is it about Australia that you wouldn't like to go back to?

jimquk, do they have the Internet in India now? Bloody hell, I have missed a lot! When I left India Margaret Thatcher was PM here, the mobile phone wasn't invented, PCs worked on DOS and the formal proposals to start a World Wide Web weren't even in draft form. It's been a looong time. I love that p...

>>BC

Hmm. I'm torn on that.

Weirdly, I'm not as delighted as my wife was (there's no pleasing some people LOL)! I'm still trying to convince her that India is the best place to bring up our kids. And, if we do decide to go, it makes sense to get the BC before I go or I lose ILR.

... in no small part thanks to all the great advice I got in here, including from threads I didn't actually participate in. It helped to have a good lawyer too, though she probably wouldn't call control freaks like me good clients ;) I sent the application in about 11 months ago. It was a fairly str...

I presume that new minimum tax provisions will be in place on 6th April and it's likely that either a Labour or Conservative government will move to insist that foreigners permanently resident in the U.K. pay their fair share of income tax. That will catch only the smaller players. The big fish wil...

Re government departments - when in doubt it's safer to work on the premise that they do have access. Especially when playing for high stakes.

So what happens if the net outcome of their effort (or lack of effort) is nothing? Is it your advice that there is no option but for the client to sit and wait?

Just out of interest, Victoria, what do you do when it takes so long? OK at some point you'd have advised her, like you've done here, to contact her MP ... but, let's face it, MPs don't really do anything. They write a letter requesting information and then write back with a copy of the reply. In th...

Victoria, but 3.5 years?! Is that how long they are taking nowadays?

I really don't understand why people on this forum need to be so unfriendly.

I could pick holes in the wording of almost every petition. But I agree with the broad sentiment behind this one and I've signed it.

ajayjain, I understand your problem. I know a lot of Indian/Pakistani couples here who have chosen for one partner to retain their original Asian citizenship. And this goes back decades. thirdwave explains it well and with useful links. Dawie, we Asians tend to worry less about the wife running away...

Very interesting. £40K isn't a lot. If I'm going to employ them at £30K anyway this gives me a way of buying a UK passport for £10K x 5 = £50K* That's cheaper than buying stay in the Business category which is still a six figure sum. *£40K-£30K is £10K, the premium I'm paying. That premium ne...