EEA Family Permit (UK citizen in Saudi with Thai wife)

[Blyboy]

To all,

Thanks in advance for any suggestions and help on my situation.

Of course, I have tried to contact the UK government for clarification on the following questions, but they have been utterly useless. Most of the time it's obvious that they don't even read your specific questions, and just redirect you to pages on their site that you have already read. Plus, trying to put simple, but pertinent information and asking questions into 500 characters on their website is very difficult.

So, I find myself here, asking for some help.

I am a UK citizen who is currently living in Saudi Arabia with my Thai wife (married for 4 years).
We both have residence permits (iqamas) for Saudi.
In May 2016 we plan to leave Saudi and go back to the UK.
We will be applying for an EEA Family Permit, but understand that we'll need to live in another EEA country first (I looked at Spain, maybe for 3-6 months) and then 'use' the Surinder Singh route to enter the UK.

My questions are:

1- It seems that visas for most European countries only permit my wife to stay for around 3 months (even with an EEA spouse visa), so how is it possible to stay for 6 months?
2- If my wife gets a Schengen Tourist visa, could she still apply for an EEA Family Permit, or does she have to be on a spouse visa?
3- Has anyone else here used Spain as their base before they went back to the UK?

As I have read, the 'center of life' issue is the reason we would 'prefer' to stay for longer than 3 months so that we are not denied, but I don't understand how that's going to be possible if most visas that my wife could get are only for a maximum of 3 months?

Thanks again

[vinny]

You and your wife may move and live in Spain under Directive 2004/38/EC.

[biblapmcdantope]

I’m in the middle of doing what you are thinking about doing. When you come to Spain your wife will need to get an EU resident’s permit to stay longer than three months. For this you will need a resident’s permit (a formality, from your district capital police station) and then you will both need to apply at your district capital foreign bureau for your wife’s permit – proving your marriage (with UK-foreign office apostile less than three months old) and your income or savings (all English documents translated into Spanish through a registered translator), also supplying empadronimiento document and usual stuff (passport etc). If there is any error your application is pushed back – try not to make any mistakes as it can go on and on. In very rural areas you will get help, in the big cities - forget it.

Once your wife has that she can stay in Spain for 5 years, then you can do the Surinder Singh route (you must be living and working in Spain with job, then you can get EEA1 permit, with which you can get EEA2 5 year UK permit – all explained elsewhere on this site).

[Blyboy]

Thanks very much, Vinny and Biblapmcdantope. I will check into both of these responses.

[Richard W]

– proving your marriage (with UK-foreign office apostile less than three months old) and your income or savings (all English documents translated into Spanish through a registered translator), also supplying empadronimiento document and usual stuff (passport etc).

I've heard that proving a marriage contracted in Thailand can be quite a performance. If your marriage was contracted outside the EU, start checking on the procedure for proving it.

[Blyboy]

Richard W

Thanks for the heads-up.

My wife has been to the UK four times with visit visas (the last being a 2 year one), and also to Europe with the Schengen visa. We provided the original marriage certificate, certified etc by a translator and stamped by the MOFA in Bangkok. That seemed to be enough at the time, so hopefully it will be enough in the future.

What a colossal pain in the backside getting back into your 'native' country.