Post
by goodlord » Fri Aug 20, 2010 3:42 pm
Dear I am writing to explain the frustration I have had in renewing my UK immigration visa and the hope that you might be able to help me achieve the renewal.
I am an accountant and my husband is a geologist. We gave up our careers and settled life in our country and came to the UK under the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (HSMP) and embarked on a path making to take Britain as our home. I have work with the NHS. Our daughter has been born while we have been in the UK, she is nineteen months old and I am now 17 weeks pregnant with our second child.
My original visa was due to expire on 8th May 2010 so I submitted an application to the UKBA to renew under the new points based system on 31st March. To my greatest surprise, the extension application and that of my entire family was refused without any good reasons.
Initially the UKBA sent us an acknowledgement letter saying that they were unable to take the payment for the application from the details supplied for my bank card. No attempt was made to call us on the phone number provided to discuss what difficulty they had in taking the payment. No further contact was made till after our current visa expired, when on 12th April our application papers were returned to us. In the accompanying letter they advised that if we wished to continue with the application that we should submit a fresh application. This we did on 16th April enclosing details for payment. On the 7th May we received another refusal letter. This time UKBA stated we had not submitted the appropriate documents to claim the necessary points. I do not agree with that opinion. Additionally they stated we did not have leave to enter the UK at the time of our second application. This is untrue since our first application was made in good faith on 31st March and the UKBA did not advise us of the first refusal till after the visa expired. Additionally they stated there was no right of appeal against the decision and that we have no right to stay in the United Kingdom and are liable to be removed if we don’t leave.
We may be prosecuted with a possible fine of up to £2500 and up to six months imprisonment and we will be liable to be removed from the UK to Nigeria. They also seized all our passports. However at the end they said that we could submit a fresh application if we had any additional information not included in the latest application with the appropriate fees.
I completed another application form with all the specified documents and submitted it to the UKBA with the appropriate fees through a solicitor on the24th May and the application was acknowledged on the 25th May after taking the application fees. After seven weeks and four days they replied and still refused to award me my complete point. In the last application out of the 95 points I scored including 75 points for attributes they only assessed me for 70 points. They denied my points from the cash I earned in my second employment. UKBA stated that the documents I submitted supporting my earnings of £3000 were not complete as I had supplied only one type of evidence. The evidence for my NHS role was not challenged.
As specified in the published guidance applicants must provide at least two different types of supporting documents as evidence of each source of income for which points are being claimed and you chose the evidence from the list below: payslips, personal bank statements showing, the payment made to the applicant, letter from the applicant’s(previous) employer confirming that he/she has received the exact amount he/she is claiming, official tax document generated by the tax authority or the applicants employer showing earnings which tax has been paid/is to be paid in a tax year (I. e. P60).
For the second job earnings the evidence I submitted was letter from my employer confirming that I have received the amount I claimed (£3000) from her and that she pay me in cash which wasn’t paid into a bank account, a P60, wage slips, and a HMRC payslip for income tax and national insurance. Additionally there was a letter from my employer’s accountant confirming that she has submitted the appropriate returns to HMRC with regards to PAYE. They did not regard all this as sufficient evidence. Thus my application was refused again and those of my husband and daughter as dependants and asked us to leave the UK or face deportation. Before we came to the United Kingdom we signed that we were going to take Britain as our home, we have been law abiding citizens, worked hard, paid our taxes and have contributed to the growth of the economy of the country. We are not entitled for any benefit. However we did not get fair treatment from UKBA. Instead we have had two sets of visa extension fees charged but still we have no visa. We came to the UK aspiring that our future children would have a better life but now our daughter who is just 19 months, an innocent child who has done nothing to deserve this, is having her future destroyed.
We now cannot work as the visa application acknowledgment letter, used in lieu of a visa, needed by our employers is only valid for 6 weeks. So now we have no income and are having to use our savings to get by. This is a very stressful for me and my husband. As I said at the start I am now pregnant and my husband is being impacted due to this unfair treatment.
That is not even the case we received a letter from my husbands uncle telling us the dangers in coming back home and begging us not to come back. we have sent out another form FLR(O) TELLING the secretary of state the reasons why I want to stay in the uk.mensioning Article 8, combined with my application which was refused without any good reason
Please we need your help to look into this matter and find solution
Yours sincerely
Maria Papa