Hello,
My husband and I are in the middle of an agonising battle against the rejection of his Spouse Visa Application which was initially predicted to conclude within 6 months but is currently at the 8 month mark.
We appealed the rejection and our First tier tribunal was expedited on the grounds of my mental health; I have chronic anxiety and suffered a mental breakdown due to the stress of the procedings and as a result the hearing date was expedited from the 30th of Jan (!!!) to the 7th of November. I really was very unwell and was signed off work for 3 months.
The hearing went very well and yet another long wait ensued..We were told around 3 weeks but it took 6 weeks to get the determination whereby the judge ruled in our favour. The impact this has had on my mental health has been immeasurable and when we finally got the positive answer you cannot imagine the feeling of relief I felt; it was as if somebody had picked a 10 tonne truck up from my chest.. But we knew it wouldn't be over until we found out whether the home office were going to appeal or not.
Another agonising wait...
We found out just before Christmas that the home office had submitted an appeal and we were heart-broken; our case was water-tight and there really wasn't any 'material errors of law' so how could they do this to us?
We would then have to wait again to see if their application to appeal had been successful and on the 11th of jan, we received the letter saying they had been successful in their application and we had to go through another hearing with the Upper Tribunal. Their argument was that they didn't think the judge reasoned himself properly in Paragraph 22 (Despite pages before that explaining his decision!!!) and that the judge shouldn't have relied on Article 8 with regards to my mental health and that my husband and I having to live in separate countries would not cause an unjustifibly harsh outcome. Our barrister is arguing that the judge did infact reason himself thoroughly, that this amounts to nothing more than a disagreement and not a material error of law, and that the Home Office are acting unlawfully themselves, breaching article 8 by trying to obstruct this.
I cannot put into words how we feel right now. Since hearing the news I am totally beside myself and our barrister has advised us that this could take approximately 2 months to go to hearing. He has submitted the Short Notice hearing form along with the original expedited hearing details to see if this can be hurried along, but I imagine *everybody* submits this form so I'm not feeling hopeful about this. I wanted to learn from you guys what the general timeline is for upper tier tribunals, particularly with those who had previous expedited tribunals?
I'm getting to the point where I don't think I can cope with this anymore and have become very suicidal. What gets to me the most is that the Home Office have a stack of my medical evidence showing exactly what this process did to me last year yet they are purposefully and with intent causing me grevious harm by prolonging this process. I am nauseated by this. Utterly and absolutely disgusted. Is there anything I can do to claim emotional damages from the home office or at least attempt to recoup our legal fees? It's just not fair that we were given a positive determination and some jobsworth has waltzed in and given our case a cursory glance with an already biased disposition to REJECTING him and not bothering to look at the merits of our case or consider the many factors. The reason why the original spouse visa was rejected in the first place was because the home office exercised their discretion based on TWO errors of fact and ONE error of law, that they made!
Our barrister reassures us by saying that the original decision has been upheld but the home office have the burden of trying to convince upper tribunal judges'.. But I'm beginning to lose all hope and am terrified that this whole process is going to take another 6 months. Help...Please...
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