My husband and I are in anguish at the outcome of refusal of my application for family permit in the UK. We just got married last November and we are suffering from living apart. I am Chinese, now living in Shanghai, China and my husband is French, who is living in London. We’re here posting our case and longing for help.
Our situation in a nutshell:
- Husband is an EEA national who, we believe, has acquired permanent status in 2008, as he moved to the UK in 2003 and was fully employed from 2003 till 2015. However he never requested his PR card, so we applied as ‘family member of a qualified EEA national’.
- My husband is now in a sabbatical/jobseeking status after a voluntary redundancy agreement with his previous employer which had two sides: 1/ it gave us the time to know each other better, and marry. But 2/ his unemployed status seems to be used by the Home Office as a reason to not believe our relationship will last, and so to refuse my Family Permit applications.
- I am a Chinese national, currently unemployed as I actually left my job in a respectable UK company to try to go to the UK.
- Husband is currently in the UK, I am currently in China.
More details on my applications
In Oct 2016, I visited my now husband on visitor visa
In Nov 2016, we got married in London.
In Dec 2016, we submitted my application of Resident Card.
in Jan 2017, I received COA (certification of application).
In Feb 2017, I returned China and started to apply family permit.
In March 2017, I received the refusal letter on my 1st application of family permit where the reasons stated by entry clearance office are as followed:
- 1)On your application you state that my sponsor is a jobseeker. You have Failed to provide any evidence of this or that your sponsor is in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance or that he is currently applying for jobs and has interviews to attend. This lead me to doubt that his stated employment circumstances are genuine and without further evidence to corroborate this I am not satisfied that he is an EEA national exercising his treaty rights in the UK
- 2)You have failed to provide evidence that your EEA national family member is a qualified person in accordance with regulation 6 of the immigration (EEA) Regulations 2016. I am therefore not satisfied that your EEA national family member is residing in the UK in according with the immigration regulation 2016.
- 3)I note from your immigration history that you have seen been issued two visitor visa to the UK. At that time in both applications, you stated you were married to a Chinese national and you were living together. You divorced him in JULY 2016. You also stated you would be staying at Hotel and you would be travelling to the UK for 14 days for tourism. In this family permit application, you stated you met your sponsor in the JUNE 2015 and stated your relationship at the same time. You then married to your sponsor in the UK on a visit visa, which is not permitted by the immigration rules ( the application must not intend to marry or form a civil partnership , or to give notice of this, in the UK , except where they have a visit visa endorsed for marriage or civil partnership). I am satisfied that you breached the conditions of the visit visa previously issued to you and that the information you provided in January 2016 is not consistent with the information you have provided in this application
- 4)On your application you state that you and sponsor are in contact with each other by living together. You have provided no evidence of any communication or contact between you. I note you have provided a letter from your sponsor’s landlady however this is no evidence of a tenancy agreement for this property or to whom it is rented. I am therefore not satisfied that the documents you have submitted in support of your application demonstrate you are living together as married couple as you state in your application.
Then we provided following documents in our 2nd application of family permit to address these concerns.
- 1) my husband’s job activities such as enrolment of job training, email communications with head hunters, and an interview in Berlin he attended.
- 2)my husband’s employment history including payment slips, tax bills and contracts from 2003—2015. He got redundancy in the middle of 2015 and has been a job seeker since then. My husband first entered the UK on 19 OCT 2003. We believe my husband acquired permanent residence on 20 OCT 2008 as an EEA national who worked and resided permanently in the UK for 5 years, under regulation 15(1) of the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006
- 3)our letter to clarify what caused the inconsistence in both applications and our conjugal relationship. Documents including our travel history, our chat history, our photos , letters from home office and letters from his friends we met in London and his family we met in France have been co-attached to state how our relationship is genuine and legally married.
- 4)I lived with my husband from oct 2016 – feb 2017 . so I provided documents such as landlady’s letter , gas bills, electricity bills, water bills , internet bills , photos of traveling together in the UK , photos of visiting his parents in France
We received the 2nd refusal letter – for Family Permit - in the beginning of April where the reasons stated by another entry clearance office are as follow:
- 1)You have still not provided evidence your sponsor is exercising his treaty rights in the UK, although you have stated in your application he is unemployed. You have not provided evidence of any jobseeker’s allowance, while you provided redundancy information with this application. You have not shown details that he is applying for jobs. This leads me to doubt that his stated employment circumstances are genuine and without further evidence to corroborate this I am not satisfied that he is an EEA national exercising this treaty rights in the UK
2)You stated you married your sponsor in NOV 2016. As evidence of contact you have submitted no detail to show you are in contact with your partner. It would be unusual to expect to see more evidence of communications given you state you last saw your sponsor on 24 Feb 2017. I am therefore not satisfied you have addressed the concerns of the entry clearance officer in your last refusal.
What we are doing
What we are told to do (we hired a £300 lawyer for assessment, it was not extremely helpful) and what we have done so far:
1) We have cancelled my resident card application, as we were told it is void since I have left the country before the result and also because of the Family Permit refusals we anticipate they are going to not even look at the RC application, just look at our history, see FP rejection, and reject the RC. Also, we need the papers for next point.
2) Husband working on getting official Permanent resident status, not submitted yet, we wonder if we should do it or not, is there any risks? Can they reject the PR based on my Family Permit rejections?
3) We are working on converting the UK marriage into French laws. This will allow me to get a shenghen visa for free for when I want to visit his family etc, but also gives us an alternative in the future, in case the UK really doesn’t want us, we could potentially go to France. I am also working on transposing the marriage into Chinese law.
4) Husband is now actively looking for a job, he was hoping we could first be together and then we could both look for jobs, however it seems the Home office doesn’t see it that way, he needs a job to show that our relation will last.
Now, why such a long post
1) First we want to share a bit our story, as this forum was very helpful to us to find information.
2) We would like to know what people suggest us to do for next steps. What do you guys think?
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