These boards contain so much helpful information and I thought it is only right that I share our own experiences of Surrinder Singh so far. I myself am from Zimbabwe and my wife and son are British passportholders.
Initially we were going to do Surrinder Singh in Ireland but we were on the receiving end of the delay on
accompany C visas. So we withdrew our application with INIS in February 2016 after waiting 6 months with no decision and applied for a Schengen instead. We did not apply under the directive for the Schengen, we applied as tourists and the visa was issued within 3 days at the French embassy in Harare Zimbabwe. For more information on how we got the Schengen visitors' visa feel free to browse my comments history.
We went to France for 2 weeks to decide between France and Spain but it seemed from what we saw and the enquiries we made that it would take longer in France so we went to Spain. We settled in Malaga, on the Costa. We arrived in Spain in March. By the end of March my wife, the EU citizen had registered with policia Nacional and got her N.I.E. (which is Foreigner's ID number) as well as self employed with Agencia tributaria as an autonomo. Her line of work was a beauty therapist and also an exporter of goods back to Zimbabwe to customers we had delt with before. That took a day. For a step by step guide see on Autonomo registration see http://www.advoco.es/advice/26-autonomo ... ation.html
We applied for EU citizens' residency after 3 months (in June) of working and paying social security- you need to register with the Spanish NHS for healthcare and for that autonomos are covered but you have to prove before registering that you have been keeping up with your social security payments. Requirements for EU residency can be found here. http://www.spainexpat.com/spain/informa ... y_members/.
Both EU citizens' residency cards was issued on the same day. May I add that requirements vary from region to region.
We booked for an appointment for non EU's residency on the Extranjeria website- https://sede.administracionespublicas.g ... io/icpplus. We applied mid June- they had a problem with our marriage certificate. They wanted it apostilled by the Spanish embassy from country of issue so we had to DHL it back to Zimbabwe to get it sorted. We got it back in September, submitted it and got a "favourable result" for Spanish RC a month later.
We then had to book an appointment at Policia Nacional to have biometrics taken for non-EU's Spanish RC on the 7th of October and we got the actual card 5 weeks later. We did not bother with family permit- you can only apply in Madrid and with having a little one it wasn't feasible to make the journey so we decided to just return to the UK with EU RC.
We flew with Ryanair and had no issues checking in. When we got to the border the Home Office questioned us as to why we didn't have a family permit and we said because we don't need one. They questioned me on my past immigration history and I pointed out that under EU law I don't have to answer 'immaterial questions'. They took my passport and did some checks, when they came back they tried to accuse me of 'going around UK immigration law' to which we pointed out we were doing nothing illegal. At that point I pulled out a sheet I had prepared incase they attempted to refuse me entry which required ECO's details, reasons for refusal, evidence presented to him to show that I had acquired free movement rights and he obviously refused to sign it.
He went away again to speak to his Supervisor, she then took over and said to us "he is just following procedure" and gave me a 6 month stamp "Admitted to the UK under EEA regs for 6 months". The whole process at the border took about half an hour. So now we are in the UK and intend to apply for a UK residence card.
We believe our centre of life and work evidence is strong enough and we will see how that goes especially with the new rules that came into force on the 25th of NOvember. I have no intention of submitting my residency card and passport with my application as I have read of the Home Office illegally witholding passports of EU family members and besides, we will need to travel to France to see family and I don't fancy dealing with Home Office bureaucracy of trying to request documents back and probably never getting them in time until legal proceedings. Right now we are just settling in again and sorting out accommodation back in the UK etc.
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