Jambo wrote:Not good enough.
If you don't intend to live in the UK after becoming BC, you do not meet the requirement (unless you join the British Army which I presume you don't). Keeping property and planning to return in a few years does not meet the requirement.
The minimum the country can ask from its residents (including non citizens) is to obey to the rules. Your line of questioning hints that you decided not to follow the rules and just worried if you going to get caught.
I wonder if the emergency passport was all part of a great plan to travel on a new travel document unknown to the HO. I suspect that if you would have been approved, you would be on the first plane back to the UK to attend the ceremony and you would not ask if there are ways around it.
Sorry for being sarcastic but I don't like when people abuse the system and it seems that that is your intention.
Thanks for the reply. Just to clarify - my intentions are exactly the opposite of what you think. In fact, I'm desperately trying to educate myself so that I don't break any rules, I don't think I've ever broken a rule, big or small in my life. My leaving was a chosen date and chosen without being fully informed and is causing me untold stress actually. Why would I choose to leave a mere 5 days before application?
All this is the result of some bad advice from my lawyer who told me they would send my application in when I was out of the country and so I didn't even know this was a potential problem until now.
The lawyer also said I could apply on the basis of the years preceding the letter from the Home Office stating family member, as long as I could prove durable relationship (which I can since 2003). Now I'm not sure this is the case and decided to wait till now in case that information was incorrect.
In addition, the emergency document was in no way intentional...it has actually been very distressing, time consuming and costly, and all because I was too busy giving birth and looking after a new baby to notice my passport expired and would take minimum 6 months for my embassy to re-issue.
My husband's British company is sending him to their office in our home country (while they need him there).
Anyway, thanks for your time and I appreciate the advice you have given me thus far. If I'm not eligible, then I'm not eligible. I don't intend to break any rules.