Irish Visa for my Ecuadorian Partner

[Irish Guy]

I would appreciate if anyone could give me the best route.

I am currently dating a women from Ecuador now for 4 months via LDR. Both me and my girlfriend are sure we want to be together and she wants to move here (Ireland). We have not met personally but I am going to visit her in June this year for 3 weeks . We are both sure that we will get married in the future and are very compatible and have skyped daily since we decided to become a couple (We met in California when I worked over their back in 2011). She does have a highly skilled job as a Food Engineer. We are planning on getting engaged and married etc. We have known each other for a number of years and are comfortable and extremely happy. I would really appreciate some good advice on the quickest way to obtain a Joint Spouse Visa for her. We would be so thankful for advice on how best to proceed with this.

Warm Regards

[Zoot7]

The best and fastest way is to visit her in her country a number of times, get married in her country, and then apply for the Join Family (Spouse) visa. You'll have to see how difficult it is for a foreigner to get married in Equador.

You'll need to prove your relationship is genuine when you apply for the visa, so you'll have to show that you've visited her a number of times (the exact number isn't clear but I would imagine 3/4 visits in total should be enough). The more evidence you have, the better. So keep all skype/whatsapp logs, photos together, flight tickets, stamps in your passport, supply plenty of photos together including wedding photos, also look for hotel receipts with your joint names etc. if possible.

All the details on supporting documents are here:
http://inis.gov.ie/en/INIS/Pages/Join%20Family

Timeline for approval is usually quoted as 6 months for spouses of Irish citizens. This could vary depending on where the visa is approved too, if it's to go to Dublin it's usually around that time frame.

My wife and I were initally going to go down the Join Spouse visa route and I did a lot of perparation for it, but she ended up getting in here on a work visa instead which was much faster, so I can't share experience on a timeline there.

If you wanted to get married in Ireland, it would be messy. You'd have to get her a special short-stay visa to enter the country to get married - to get that you'd have to prove your relationship is genunie just like I said above and for that you'll have to visited her in her country and be able to prove that you've done so.

Assuming you can get that, after you get married in Ireland she'd have to leave the country and return home and apply for the Join Spouse visa from there as normal, so the overall process would likely be much longer.

The marriage visa details are here:
http://inis.gov.ie/en/INIS/Pages/Marria ... hip%20Visa

[Zoot7]

Doesn't seem to be any edit post button....

By the way - is there any chance she can get a job here? It might be a long shot, but if she can then, the process of getting her here should much faster.

[Irish Guy]

Thanks so much Zoot7 for this help. I mean it when I say thanks a million for your time.

With respect to working, yes she has done a number of Skype interviews here with XYZ but just missed the job she was hoping to get. On the other hand she has applied to many jobs so fingers crossed she is successful and this would make a lot of things easier.

Warm regards.