Jobseeker to Student

[Starnes]

Hello All,

Some advice would be appreciated. I am a non-EEA family member(husband) of an EEA national.

We arrived here in November so we have been here almost 7 months.

I have been self-employed this entire time, my wife has been an active jobseeker, with evidence, but happened to have no luck managing to find employment.

My wife (EEA national) has been accepted (conditionally while waiting on 1 reference, should be arriving soon) into post-graduate studies here, so she will be switching from jobseeker (7 months) to student status, we are in process of acquiring CSI for all of us.

We have not applied for an EEA1 or EEA2 as of yet. Will there be any issue with 7 months as a jobseeker? Do we include this time in the EEA2 form? It only seems to care about current status.

[sheraz7]

For EEA2 application only the current evidences of treaty rights of an EU national needs. Since applying eea2 is optional therefore student will be better than jobseeker option. However, that 7 months of jobseeking may cause trouble in proving at PR stage after 5 years. Make sure the EU national must have CSI while being student.

[Starnes]

Thanks for the advice!

I imagine we could just prolong waiting to apply for the permanent residency by 7 months just to be safe? So we wait 5 years 7 months, make sure it's infallable that treaty rights are being exercised without jobseeker periods for the last 5 years and then apply, that way if they raise an issue with the first 7 month period we'd have the next 5 years to fallback on to.

Or is permanent residency absolutely required and needs to be solidly proven after 5 years exactly?

Either rate, thanks again for the reply, it does lend itself some clarity to our situation!

[sheraz7]

There are several threads relating to Permanent residence (eea4) and eea2 application with members experiences which can be searched. And also remember that first three months an EU national is free from excersing any treaty rights.