Life In The UK - Settlement & Citizenship

0 June 21, 2012 in UK Visas N Stuff by PhilAdmin

Philippines Passport

Starting from the beginning:

*At the time of this articles posting, my wife and I are living in the UK.

In early 2010, I arrived in the Philippines and married my girlfriend of 7 years. Once my 59 day visa was up, I left and returned home to the UK, where I have remained since. Shortly after our wedding, we started the visa process to get her here to the UK, under a Spousal Visa. As soon as I got off the plane, I started to put together all of the papers I needed to prove that we are married and that I can support her e.t.c, once I had all of those gathered and in triplicate, I shipped them via Fedex to my wife in the Philippines. As I was sorting the papers here, she was also sorting the papers she needed on her end. She needed to attend two seminars for oversea filipinos, before she could apply for her visa. Once she completed those two seminars, she applied for her passport which took less than a month to acquire, all in all pretty fast! Then she was on a plane to Manila, to apply in person at the British Embassy. They took her biometric data (fingerprints e.t.c) took all of the papers and her passport (so they could attach the visa if she was accepted), then she was finished and back on the plane to Cebu. At the time we applied we were told it would take 3 to 6 months to process, which is outrageous! However, as soon as my wife landed in Cebu after just leaving Manila, she received a text message from the British Embassy to say that the visa papers are currently being processed. Three days pass, and she received yet another text message from the British Embassy, stating that her visa was processed and accepted! Now that was FAST! A week later she had her original documents and her passport back, with the new visa inside. We were both very impressed at the speed and efficiency of the embassy there. As there are many horror stories of it taking 6 months or MORE for some people! So this came as a very pleasant and welcomed surprise!

Two years & settlement:

For the past two years my wife has been living in the UK with me, on what they call a probationary period. This probationary period is to prove to the government that it is not a marriage of convenience and is one of solid reasoning and legitimacy. However the time has come to now start the paper process all over again, so she can obtain a settlement visa or what they class as a ILR Visa (Indefinite leave to remain). However before she applies for that, she is required to get a "Life In The UK" certification, which is a test to prove she can read, and understand the english language enough to answer 24 randomly picked questions out of 400 possible ones. The questions are absolutely a load of bunk! As I bet 95% of UK citizens would not even pass this test, even the ones that have lived here their entire life! Anyway, tomorrow is the day we drive up to Plymouth so she can take the test. In preparation, we purchased a book and a website subscription, which administers practice tests, to fully understand the Life In The UK test please watch this VIDEO. Once the "Life In The UK" test is completed she is awarded a certificate that proves she has passed and met the requirements of the test, she only needs to take the test once and it is valid forever. This test is a REQUIREMENT and is NEEDED before she can apply to settle here! My wife is applying for her ILR visa this coming August (2012), we can not wait until it is over with. Now keep in mind that when you pay the settlement visa fee of £1400 (in person service) and you apply, you can still be rejected for certain reasons and your £1400 pounds is NON-REFUNDABLE, meaning you just blew a large chunk of change. If this happens to us, we are packing our bags and heading out of the UK..... But we have met and exceeded every requirement, so they have no reason to reject us. So we are very optimistic at this point, and not really worried about it.

Click here to watch a video all about the Life In The UK Test.