spouse visa refused - wait for appeal/reapply?

[mzungu]

Hi there.

I will try to keep it brief!

My wife is Kenyan, I am British, we married in Kenya in September 2006 and unfortunately she was refused a spouse visa on the grounds that the British High Commission was not satisfied that:

-intend to live permanently with your spouse
-will be adequately maintained without recourse to public funds

My question is this: Should we keep going with our appeal (lodged in November) or is it worth reapplying to try to speed her return?

We have PLENTY of very big phone bills since our forced separation that show maintenance of contact in the meantime so hopefully this would not be in question.

Unfortunately our finances have been “up and down” –mostly down- since we lost her income from not being here (our bank statements will show us being quite overdrawn on a number of occasions until recently), although I am now working an additional two jobs on top of my “day job” and will soon receive an inheritance of £3000-4000 (we previously had no savings when we applied initially).

Do we stand a chance of success by reapplying or should we just wait for the appeal to eventually come to AIT?

If anyone can give us any tips we would be really grateful!

Cheers

[moogle333]

From what I have heard on this forum it seems a bit of a waste of time appealing against a decision, its better to try and fix what went wrong then re-apply.

I would hope the phone bills would help to prove you intend to stay together.

As for the adequate maintenance, could you get somebody who is better off to sponsor her, e.g your parents or a friend? also you could include details of your wifes previous jobs stating that she intends to work.

I think im right in thinking you need to prove you have £88 per week spare to look after your wife.

I think the difficult bit is showing you intend to live together and its not a sham marriage maybe you could write lots of letters to each other to include in the new visa app or get some friends who know you both to write a letter saying they support your marriage.

[mzungu]

Hi Moogle

Thanks for your reply!

I'm hoping that the phone bills will help to prove we are genuine (God knows they're big enough!)!

Unfortunately we already included a letter and bank statements from my parents offering us their support and sponsoring us to £5000 and this it appears was disregarded in our first spouse application. I don't think we will bother to include them if we do apply again as it was ignored last time.

We also included a job offer letter, details of her previous employment and qualifications which didn't seem to matter to the final result (in this case at least)

If we apply again hopefully we will have better luck this time with the new circumstances!

If anyone else can add anything I would be grateful!

[life24]

I know is paining my visa was rejected with the same reasons I have appeal on august and got my appeal hearing on march. I think would be better for you to ask the embassy to give you the copy of notes of the interview. You may reapply and then ask your wifwe same question again.

appeal is taking long but is 98% you will win the case cause they cant prove if you marriage is genunuie

[mzungu]

Thanks for your reply!

Do you think they will give us the interview notes? My feeling is that if we ask for the interview notes and have the appeal pending they will just tell us to wait for the 'bundle' of evidence to be returned rather than give us the notes.

Does anyone else have any experience of this?

Is it just me - or does it crazy that ECO's hand-write interview notes rather than keeping a tape recording of them? Seems to leave a pretty big possibility for errors - and gives them more work anyway!

[BG101]

I am Kenyan wife of BG, denied visa in nairobi first time, re applied again and denied again for the same reasons raised in first appl despite them having been corrected. Appealed and appeal allowed. I got my spouse visa for me and my baby this jan after appeal was allowed in Oct. last year. My advice is get a lawyer in nairobi to draft the appeal like one i used, then get another lawyer in uk during the hearing to be able to beat the 28 day notice. Secondly, tell your wife to put the appeal to visa section in nairobi cos it still gets back there whether you send to appeal tribunal first. iN APPEAL, the judge is impartial and you can put evidence before him then. thanks

[toneee]

You can make a new application while the appeal is going through. Some people say this isn't possible, but I was told this by the British embassy in Zimbabwe and have e-mails to prove it.

However, it's worth phoning the embassy in Kenya to find out what their position is on this.