“I will not be bullied into leaving my home, family, friends, job and life.”
Emma is a British citizen married to the love of her life, Haytham from Egypt. They have known each other since they were kids.
Their wedding on 29th of August 2012 was beautiful and was followed by a wonderful honeymoon. In October they applied for a six month visit visa as they did not have all the paperwork necessary to apply for a spouse visa at that time, namely the certificate to satisfy the new English language requirement.
However the Home Office decided December 2012 to refuse the application based on financial reasons,
despite Emma being in full time employment and earning above even the required threshold for a
settlement visa, and despite Haytham himself being in full time employment in Egypt, owning his own property outright and having substantial savings.
They appealed this decision immediately. In May 2013 the Home Office failed to submit a decision to the appeal by the due date, so Emma will now attend an Oral Hearing in October 2013 – a year after the initial visa application for a six month visa; fourteen months into her marriage.
Emma has travelled to Egypt four times since getting married. Although it is wonderful to have the opportunity to see her husband (as many don’t) it is not conducive to either annual leave at work or the purse strings to be going overseas so regularly. It also gets more and more emotional to leave him behind each time.
The process has taken an unacceptable amount of time for absolutely no reason at all. Haytham has since sat and passed his language test exam and they fully intend to apply for a spouse visa, and Emma dreads to think how long that process will take!
Emma is determined however to keep fighting for her right to choose to married whomever she so decided to, and to have him live with her in her country. She refuses to be bullied into leaving her home, family, job, friends and life here. She is a British Citizen and will not let the Home Office make her feel, that in loving her husband, she has committed a crime.
Previously :John Vine's report on marriage visa backlog.
http://icinspector.independent.gov.uk/decisions-in-marriage-applications-are-reasonable-but-chief-inspector-raises-concerns-about-backlogs-and-a-lack-of-consideration-of-the-best-interests-of-children/
'However, once again I was concerned to find backlogs within the Agency. These consisted of 14,000 requests from applicants to re-consider decisions to refuse them further leave to remain, and a further 2,100 cases where people were awaiting an initial decision on their application for further leave to remain. Some dated back nearly a decade. This is completely unacceptable and I expect the Agency to deal with both types of case as a matter of urgency.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jan/23/inspector-uk-border-agency-backlog
Gerard and Vilai's #settlementvisanightmare - 'because we can' :
http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/gerard
So sorry to hear your struggle, our experience was identical but after 12 months they were forced to relent because their delaying tactics ran out and they had no leg left to stand on..so keep the hope jp because soon u will be together :-)
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