Post
by nikkyraj » Sun May 17, 2015 3:48 am
Thanks nks.
I'm not sure what the rules are now regarding this. Been a while since I looked into it.
I got married in Feb 2012 when I was on ILR. My wife got her spouse visa in April 2012 and came to the UK in May 2012. Some major changes were made to the immigration rules in July 2012, the biggest one being that a person on Spouse visa of a person settled in the UK, needs to be in the UK for 5 years, rather than 2 years before they can apply for ILR. Some income thresholds were applied and some other changes were made, which I can't remember properly.
As my wife got her visa in April 2012, she was eligible to apply for ILR after 2 years in April 2014, as per the immigration rules prior to July 2012.
I became a citizen of the UK in January 2013, and we applied for her ILR in April 2014.
As far as I remember correctly, at the time of application in April 2014, it was very clearly mentioned on the old Home Office website, that in order to apply for ILR, a person on a UK spouse visa granted before July 2012, have to pass a Life in the UK test and an English test.
this change was made in October 2013, whereas before only Life in the UK was sufficient to prove the knowledge of life and level of English. Since October 2013, anyone applying for ILR had to pass the life in the UK test and an English test as well.
It was also very clearly mentioned on the website, that a person can prove his/her level of English by two ways. One was to give an approved English language test. Second was to prove the eligibility through academic qualification. In that, a person had to prove that that their degree is equivalent to a UK degree and ALSO that it was taught in English.
To prove that, they could either get a certificate from UK Naric confirming the same, or get a printout of the Points Based calculator and use that as evidence.
We got all the documents back which we sent to the Home Office and I sifted through the documents, and found out that the points based calculator has changed now as well.
At the time of the application, when I printed out my wife's Degree confirmation, the points based calculator was divided into two sections, to prove the equivalence of the degree and to prove the level of English. I have two separate printouts confirming that for my wife's degree it awarded 30 points for the degree being equivalent to a UK Bachelor Degree, and another print out confirming 10 points for the degree to be taught in English.
It was very clearly mentioned on the printout of the Point Based Calculator at that time that 30 points are being awarded to confirm the degree is equivalent to a UK Bachelor Degree and 10 points are being awarded for the degree to have been taught in English.
Even after very clearly being mentioned on the printout they still wanted proof. The caseworker who was handling the case, clearly did not have a clue as to what the rules were and how to process the application.
The email from the Policy team confirms that too, they said that the points based calculator was acceptable at the time of the application, and a request has been forwarded to the case worker to accept it, as it is valid, and to process the application.
As I said before, I am not really sure if the points based calculator is accepted now, or which visa categories they are valid for. Sorry, not too up to date with the current changes.
Hope this helps.
