My husband and I received our residence cards today. Our applications took 1 month and 4 days to be processed and following the advise on the forum helped us understand our rights, the process of applying and general information we needed to consider when making an application under EU Law.
About us..
My husband (EEA National)
Myself (non EEA National)
I entered the UK on a visitors visa back in January and was given 1 month to sort out my EEA Family Permit. I was grilled at the airport and was advised that I should leave the UK and reapply for entry to the UK.
As I was in the UK in some other capacity i.e. on a visitors visa, my husband and I applied to the Home Office for our residence cards. Putting together our application took about 2 weeks. Phoning the Home Office for advice was confusing at the best at times as the advice given was not consistent on the ability for us to apply/work/reside due to my visitors visa. In the end we applied and below is an an account of documents we submitted with our application.
I agree that this may be seen as exhaustive and it is not compulsory to include many of the documents as the spouse of an EEA Citizen (this list may be useful to applicants applying as the unmarried partner of an EEA Citizen) however at the time of our applications and due to our circumstances having not applied for the EEAFP, the Home Office advisors did mention that we could include documents that would have normally been submitted with an application for the EEA FP.
In addition to the compulsory documents such as your marriage certificate, passports, birth certs and passport photos..examples of supporting documents you could include with your joint application are;
Household bills - telephone bills or statements, gas bills or statements, electricity bills or statements, water rates bills or statements, council tax bills or statements
Bank and Savings - bank or building society statements/passbooks
Accomodation - mortgage statements or agreement, tenancy agreement
Recreational - membership of sports or social clubs, membership of a religious organisation
Official documents - correspondence from government departments or agencies (eg HM Revenue and Customs, Inland Revenue, Department for Work and Pensions) including evidence that you have declared your relationship to the appropriate government bodies.
Healthcare - correspondence from GP or local health authority (eg: NHS card, correspondence about ante-natal and post-natal treatment, letter confirming dates of visits to the home address by a midwife, letter confirming registration with a dentist, etc - providing these documents show your home address and the date first registered) or details of private health cover.
Other - insurance policies/certificates or other correspondence, loan agreements, AA, RAC or similar membership
In my experience, the lessons that I have learnt are
- Submitting the EEA 1 and EEA 2 applications together may lessen the processing time
- Where applications are being submitted together, send both applications off together to the EEA 1 processing department. I believe that after the 25 Feb the address is now in Liverpool. The reason for this is that chances are that your supporting documents are applicable to both applications.
- Include a pre-paid self addressed envelope for the return for your docuements. You can track most special delivery packages online.
- You can expect the certificate of application within 2-3 weeks of your application being submitted. This dis-encourages you from contacting the Home Office however, if you need your documents back to travel or for ID purposes, contact the Home Office. When you call, have your special delivery reference number handy as they would ask you for this to identify your case file.
- When corresponding with the Home Office, keep a log of all calls and follow it up in writing or by fax. The fax number is available upon request from the main number.
- Being patient is sometimes easier said than done but as applications can take up to 6 months, in this time keep up to date with changes within immigration law that may affect your application.
- Dont be put out if you did not speak to a 'nice' person on the phone on the Home Office helpline. I think it is easy for someone who is removed from your particular situation to see your application as a casefile number and it is easy to forget that your life goes on.
- The telephone advisors, it seems, have access to limited information. Our case was considered by the Liverpool offices and we actually received a call to tell us that our case had been considered and approved. When we had not received back our file in the advised time, we called the Home Office and although we were advised our case had been approved, the information was not available on their system and was down as 'being considered.'
- Know your rights. Read the Directive/2004/38/EC and notices on the BIA website.
When compiling our application, everything was in chronological order making it easy to be read. We did keep in contact with the Home Office, following up each call and fax with a letter.
I hope this information helps, and again, thank you to thsths and Directive/2004/38/EC who advised us on the forum prior to submitting our applications.
Pasha