Thank You Forum !

[Siren]

Dear John and Amber,

I have written quite extensively on a couple or more threads here in the Claiming Benefits section requesting help and advice on how to approach the ILR visa when I - as my wife's sponsor - have claimed, for an extensive time during the two year probationary period, HB and CTB and the council refused to assess my claim as ‘single person’ (resulting in the increase in PF) and want to update you on the outcome.

Here's one of the original posts (
http://www.immigrationboards.com/claimi ... ml#p674621 )

Well, thanks be to God after 4 months of waiting, my wife and I were delighted to return home after a short break to find that her settlement (ILR) visa has been granted.

In our thoroughly exhaustive (yes and exhausting!!) application, we detailed all the benefit I had received (HB, CTB, WTC) complete with letters from the council showing the increased amounts as a result of my wife's presence and decreased amounts after she began earning.

As previously stated, my wife worked as an unpaid volunteer for 7 months shortly after her arrival in the UK before being taken on PT by the organisation she was volunteering for. I work self employed as a sports arbitrage trader which, although is not gambling (it is risk free ie you cannot lose your money), does nevertheless involve betting. So we didn't have the most conventional or necessarily if one wanted to take it that way - convincing of income situations. However, despite our tenuous position income wise and unfortunate reliance on PF's which did increase as a result of the wife's presence - with your help - we were still ultimately able to succeed in her ILR application.

I want to thank you, John and Amber in particular for all your hard work and kindness here instructing me and others with your extremely knowledgeable and well informed guidance on the very tricky juxtaposition of benefits and immigration - without such help our situation would have been unthinkably so much more difficult and frustrating even as much as it has been those things with your help.

Thank you for all your support and best wishes. I hope this information is helpful to you and others in a similar situation unsure of how to proceed with benefits and immigration.

Wishing you all similar success,

Simon

[John]

Simon, glad to be of service. And pleased to see it all worked out with the ILR.

[Siren]

Thank you, John.

For the record, I should add that although I was in receipt of HB and CTB for quite some time during the spouse visa probationary period, I was not in receipt of these benefits at the time of applying for the ILR after my income rose enough to mean we no longer needed nor were entitled to them.

However, crucially, after weighing up the pros and cons, we decided that even though the benefits questions are phrased in the present tense it would still nevertheless be best to be fully open and transparent about the benefits we had had during the probationary period and this decision appears to have been proved right.