Since I’ve told you all about the lengthy, costly & emotional process of becoming a refugee in the USA; time for another immigrant experience. This time under UK’s hostile environment immigration process. I’m a legal immigrant....again! https://twitter.com/rrrrnessa/status/667019978550317056

Those that follow me know that last year I got married to a British Citizen. A few days ago I finally got my Entry Clearance for Leave to Remain as a Spouse. With UK’s election coming up, I think it’s really important for people to know just how inadequate the current process is.

I’m an American citizen, my husband is a British citizen. Even prior to getting married we determined it would be best for me to move to London with our daughter; his career was based there & mine is one that can go anywhere; his family is there & mine would be closer to me.

So, for a couple years prior to officially applying for Spousal Settlement, we read and read and read all of the UK’s guidance on this process; one that is completely convoluted and sets you up to fail from the start. We spoke to immigrantion attorney’s, read forums, etc.

In order to qualify for Leave to Remain under Appendix FM; i.e the Spousal Settlement you have to prove a few things:

1. A genuine relationship
2. Suitable Accommodation
3. Moneyyyyyy. This is the most important one. Because the entire immigration process comes down to money

The money thing: they will only count the income of the sponsor; the British citizen. It doesn’t matter if the applicant has a job, funds. The sponsor has to have a job that makes over 18,600 pounds unless there are dependents in which case it raises to 22,400 or more.

The 18.6K or the 22.4K income requirement was one that the spouse has to meet for at least 6 months prior to application. Not a huge deal if you’re a Londoner; pretty impossible to meet if you’re a British citizen working outside of London.

Right off the bat; if you don’t meet that financial requirement you cannot apply for it because you will instantly get denied.

If you don’t make that money, you can use a different route: savings in excess 62,500 & have to remain in an account for at least 6 months.

The vast majority of British citizen do not have that much in savings. Approximately 41% do not make the 18,600 requirement in order to meet the financia requirement. The Home Office’s response to this is: tough luck, don’t fall in love w/ a foreigner.

The entire point of this according to the UK’s home office is to deter a benefit drain & if you asked a regular Brit they’r probably agree with it. But here’s the thing: If you’re on a Visa in the UK, you do *not* have any recourse to benefits anyway.

Anyway, we met the financial requirement so that wasn’t an issue for us, thankfully but it will be and has been for thousands of couples and families in the UK. In fact, there are currently thousands of children separated from their parents due to this process.

Back to my own experience. In order to get the Spousal Settlement in the UK, we had to make sure we had enough money to cover the extortionate visa fees, accommodation, b/c of my daughter we also had to prove full custody, & that our relationship was genuine.

Last year, prior to the Visa process, we went to court in order to ensure that Ajsa could move to the UK with me & my husband. Despite the fact, I was her primary & sole guardian since birth. This cost us about 15,000 dollars in fees but we got it!

Accommodation: in order to prove it was suitable, we found a flat perfect for all three of us but as I was not yet a resident and didn’t have enough credit history we had to pay 6 months rent in advance and a large deposit. We did this in Feb. & that cost us $20,000.

My husband was freelancing prior to his current job and under the Appendix FM application freelancing money is accepted but the process is even more difficult so he had to put his film still career as part-time & obtain a full-time job that exceeded the income requirement. Fine.

So, we were married, living together, had enough money to cover the fees, our expenses, and had enough of a relationship history to finally apply for us to Settle in the UK.

In order to complete the application, we had to leave the UK and return to the States. Fine, we went to visit family and applied from there. Now here is where it gets really fucking good.

As I mentioned we researched this process for years, everything was clear to us...until it came time to apply. The Home Officer and the company they outsource some of their Visa processing give you wrong information on purpose. They make it so difficult to find out the truth.

For example: we were advised the Visa process could be done within 7 days if you pay for priority (not true) and then we were advised of wrong documents and how certain proof was unnecessary (also wrong).

Wanting the process to just be over with, we used priority processing and we used the Home Office’s outsourced company VFS. If you google them you will find some of the most awful reviews any company can have. Their rating on Trust Pilot is like 1.5 for example.

So, we filed our application online. It cost $1,936 dollars for me to apply as a spouse and it cost $1,936 dollars for our child to apply as a dependent. Then we booked our biometrics appointment.

We also had to pay NHS fees: it doesn’t matter that I will be working in the UK, paying taxes and fees anyway. We still had to pay the NHS fees, $1530 for me and $1530 for our daughter. Honestly not complaining about this b/c hey healthcare!!!

Regular processing for spousal Settlement Visa’s can take anywhere from 60 days up until 6 months. Not wanting to be apart for that long & because of our daughter’s school, we paid the priority fees: $2,000 for me and $2,000 for our daughter.

We went to our Biometrics appointment at the VFS Premium Centre and gave them our “supporting documents” for them to send to NYC who would scan it so that the UKVI office in Sheffield, UK could review it. It was over 400 pages:

So I don’t take up 30 tweets explaining everything. Here’s the list of documents we included:

At the appointment, they collected the docs, took our fingerprints, pictures and then proceeded to showcase that despite being outsourced by the Home Office to do this job, they knew nothing of the actual process.

There’s no way to track the application, there’s no way to ask questions about it, and despite paying 4,000 dollars for services at the VFS they give you incorrect information and you can’t follow up with them because they ignore all your emails and calls. It’s so great!

So following our application & biometrics; I did get two emails from the UKVI.

1. That my app was recieved and being reviewed.
2. To pay 1536 for my daughter’s NHS fee.

Other than that it’s silence until you get a decision email

The e-mail they send does not tell you what the decision is, just that one has been made and depending on how it was processed you will get your passport in the mail (they keep it) or if you paid extra to keep your passport you can go into a VFS office to get the stamp/decision.

While this process was going on I joined FB groups and forums for people that also went through the process. Here are some situations that happen pretty commonly that I’ve seen:

The UKVI and VFS often screw up processing priority applications that people pay huge amounts of money for and process it as standard, causing huge losses of time and money for the applicants.

They regularly state that they will reach out if they need more information but almost never do and instead just deny applicants. They lose passports constantly. They don’t scan all the documents and deny people on that basis even though the applicants sent everything in.

Most of the people who have gone through this process and end up having to deal with the Home Office, have to “escalate” with their MPs and guess what in almost every case I’ve seen the SNP & Labour MPs actually help them, the Torries almost always ignore them.

I saw people with children get denied on the basis that Skype is a sufficient form of continous familial contact. I saw people who are disabled get denied. I saw people who were the sole guardian of their child get denied b/c of custody (despite providing court orders).

There are people who have been married for 7 years, 10 years, more even who got denied because the UKVI didn’t believe they were in a genuine relationship. There are people I spoke to who have had to be apart for yearsss, raise their children alone all because of the Home Office.

This is not some small number either. Throughout this process I have read (and I am not over-exaggerating here) thousands of these stories. This process is cruel, inhumane and it is nothing more than a money making scheme.

This entire process wasn’t always like this, it was introduced when Theresa May was the Home Secretary and it was done in order to dissuade immigration, make money, & continue pushing the hostile immigrant environment.

All of this in some attempt to deter a benefit drain on the government when you, as an immigrant, as one with legal status in the UK, cannot even get benefits. It literally says it! See:

Anyway, I’m glad that we were successful but the absolute only reason we were successful in obtaining settlement in the UK is because of money, lots and lots of money and because of the possibility of future money making; i.e I have a good career and will continue making money.