EEA2 refused - Appeal, request reconsideration or re-Apply?

[bdalp]

Hi,

I am an Italian citizen doing a PhD in the UK. I am here with my wife, who is Argentine and requested a RC last January, 2014. We received a letter this Saturday, 29th March, refusing to grant her the RC on the grounds that I did not provide proof of CSI.

Since then I have already got in contact with a Health Insurance broker and will receive all the documentation regarding our CSI by the end of the week.

The question we are now facing is what path should we follow.

At the moment of the application, we did not understand that registering at the NHS was not enough proof of health insurance, but obviously claiming lack of knowledge on our side would not provide grounds for an appeal, nor for a reconsideration request. That being said, we would like to know if attaching the documents of our newly acquired health insurance would serve as proof of our will to comply with the norm. If so, under which grounds should the claim be made? Or is it better to entirelly abandon this application and start a new one from scratch?

There is also another detail that we´ve been considering. We arrived at the UK in August, 2013, and settled in Bham in mid-september. Given that we had a private insurance for the first few months, we did not rush into registering with a GP, and only did so on 24th October. Given that all of the Insurance companies I´ve come across so far have requested that I was registered with the NHS for at least 6 months before applying, it would not have been possible for us to have health insurance by the time we made the application (even if we knew about this requisite).

My wife came to the UK with a permit to work that had a 6-month validity, and (as we understood it) she needed to apply for residency before that permit expired. Would it be possible to claim that the requirement to apply for residence within the 6-month validity window is not compatible with the policy of health insurance companies regarding time of registration with the NHS?

Finally, I have just read this post: http://www.immigrationboards.com/eea-ro ... 61020.html , and am interested in knowing more about that possibility...

All in all, the question is if we have any argument to appeal or request a reconsideartion (there seems to be no mistake by UKBA, but it sounds sensible that the decision was reviwed given that we now have a health insurance), or if we should re-apply.

[Jambo]

Providing new evidence with a reconsideration request is acceptable so I would explore that first. You can also appeal or reapply (with the various cost associated). In the past reapplying was quicker but things do change.

There is no legal requirement for your wife to hold a visa so the expiry of the 6 months is not an issue.

[bdalp]

Thank you very much for your advice Jambo. We´ll try with the reconsideration request. If it´s denied, we can still re-apply.

I´ll let everyone know how it went as soon as the final decision is made.

[JoeyStix]

Hi bdalp,

I am in a very similar situation to you. I am also an Italian citizen and my wife is Turkish. We got refused on the same grounds today (i.e no CSI for her). Which is really infuriating because I had already sent proof that I was covered with private insurance and had contacted the UKBA asking whether my wife also needed to be covered to which they replied she did not!

They have withheld her passport and I am not sure whether we should appeal or reapply and whether during the appeal/application she is allowed to stay in the UK legally. Do you know if this is is the case?

Thanks,

Joey.

[bdalp]

Hello Joey,

Sorry I didn´t reply before. I did not realize that there was a new message until today.

According to what I´ve been reading both in this forum and in other places, your wife should not face any problem staying in the UK. If you remember the EEA2 application form, it clearly says that, being a EEA citizen family member, is not necessary for her to apply for the RC (though, in practice, finding a job and getting in/out of the country without it seems quite difficult).

We are still expecting some kind of response to the letter we sent. It´s been almost 40 days since we sent the letter requesting that the decision was reviewed, and we didn´t receive any kind of answer, nor even an acknowledgement that the request was being considered. We know that the letter arrived, because we sent it with a Royal Mail Signed For service, and received a message when it was delivered.

Does anyone know how long should I wait before trying to retreive our passports to start the re-application process??

I´ve been trying to contact someone that could give us some information, but have so far been unable to do so.

Also, If I were to try to retreive the passports, who should I contact?

None of the phones available online seems to be working.

All the best.

[bdalp]

Hello Everyone,

Just wanted to bring everyone up tp date on this case.

The answer from the Home Office took a while to arrive. Actually, I called the helpline for EU citizens almost every week, and though the request of reconsideration arrived only a couple of days after I sent it, they only confirmed that they started processing it one month later. So, if you decide to follow this path, be ready to wait at least 2-3 months.

Long story short, our request of reconsideration was denied under the grounds that the decision to deny the residence to my wife "was correct at the moment". Nevertheless, provided that we now had the Comprehensive Health Insurance, and that no other objections had been raised to our case, we were encouraged to re-apply.

Talking with people in a similar situation, it seems to me that we got a "hardcore" case worker. Others missing the CHI received a letter requesting that they sent a certificate of coverage before the application could continue, instead of a denial.

We are now sending a re-application, and hoping that this time everything will go smoothly.

Cheers,
bdalp