Priority visa service question

[andrewgibson]

Hello everybody,

My wife has a New Zealand passport and we are making an application for her to come back to the UK and live with me on a spouse visa. I've read through all the information on the UK government website and it all seems straightforward as we have enough savings to meet the financial requirements.

My question is this. There are various companies that offer to help you with the application process. They are quite expensive and charge around £1000 to do so. Does anybody here have experience with making an application for a non-EEU born spouse to join them in the UK? Is it straightforward or would you recommend paying somebody to help with the application?

Thanks,
Andrew

[CR001]

Straightforward if you meet the requirements. Don't forget to pay the immigration health surcharge.

Agent not needed, just a lot of money to pay for form filling as they have no influence or bearing on your application outcome. We offer advice for free

Most of us have done all our applications ourselves, right up to British Citizenship and most of us have had help from day one from the forum.

p.s Does she have UK ancestry (UK born grandparent)?

[KatieWills]

Straightforward if you meet the requirements. Don't forget to pay the immigration health surcharge.

Agent not needed, just a lot of money to pay for form filling as they have no influence or bearing on your application outcome. We offer advice for free

Most of us have done all our applications ourselves, right up to British Citizenship and most of us have had help from day one from the forum.

p.s Does she have UK ancestry (UK born grandparent)?

+1

Hubby is a Kiwi and we applied by ourselves (with some help from this awesome forum). We used the cash savings route and hubs had previously overstayed so we were less than straightforward. As long as you meet requirements and can provide all the evidence it's just a PITA form-filling/printing exercise, but no need for an agent.

[andrewgibson]

Thanks – it's encouraging to hear that it's relatively straightforward. My wife was born in Shanghai but has New Zealand citizenship and a New Zealand passport.

[CR001]

Thanks – it's encouraging to hear that it's relatively straightforward. My wife was born in Shanghai but has New Zealand citizenship and a New Zealand passport.

So no UK born grandparent then? As this would give her another visa option.

[andrewgibson]

No, no UK grandparents.

[andrewgibson]

Hi everybody,

My wife has applied for a visa to come and live with me in the UK. She is a New Zealand resident. She has been to the biometric appointment.

We want to pay extra for the visa priority service, and we did so via the VFS website. However, the website is not clear. We chose marriage for visa type and paid $NZ273. We have a document to print out and take to the biometric appointment, which my wife did. The document says we have paid the priority processing fee for a non-settlement visa.

Now I think I should have chosen Settlement visa not Marriage visa from the website.

Does anybody know whether we have made a mistake, and if so how to fix it? We haven't posted the application and documents yet.

Another issue is that when you choose settlement visa from the options the charge is over $NZ800. That doesn't correlate to £360, unless VPS is using the incorrect exchange rate (which wouldn't surprise me, as more profit for them).

Thanks,
Andrew

[KatieWills]

Sounds like you have applied for a marriage visit visa? This would allow your wife to come to the UK for 6 months to marry you and she would have to leave after 6 months. It is a non-settlement visa.

https://www.gov.uk/marriage-visa

You should apply for the "join family of a settled person" visa if the aim is for your wife to remain in the UK:

https://www.gov.uk/join-family-in-uk

the cost is £1,195, plus £600 for the Immigration Health Surcharge:

https://www.gov.uk/healthcare-immigrati ... cation/pay

We paid close to £420 for the priority service, think they make the exchange rates up as they go along..