Trevor1809

Thanks. I will see if the wife can remember when she went to get her finger prints taken but given the importance Thais put on this sort of thing I am not holding out much hope.

When I referred to what you wrote as being offensive it was with respect to enough of our own old and infirm as if they were some sort of a burden rather than older people have actually earnt their entitlement.

In 2 years times I will be considered a "burden on society" as I will no longer contribute but I suppose there are plenty out there who think that we should work until we drop dead rather than claim what we are entitled to.

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We have enough old and infirm of our own .

Wow, could you have made that any more offensive than you actually did.

Questions 9.13, 9.14 and 9.15 ask about finger prints. My wife has no idea when her prints were taken but I guess it was during the settlement visa application in 2012. I take it the the answer to 9.14 where were they taken was VFS????? in Ratchadamri and the Britich diplomatic post involved was the British Embassy.

Can I just put 2012 or are they expecting the actual date?

He will be back dating my salary payments via PAYE on the HMRC site so that it would show that I have been receiving my salary for each months since June 2014. So for every month since June 2014, he will show that my salary via PAYE.

The NI and Tax will be deducted as per the HMRC PAYE system.

The only issue is that my bank statement will not show my salary each months but only in January. It will show the net salary of 7 months.

I am not sure that is how the PAYE system works since RTI came along. You can't simply back date PAYE as if you had been earning the money monthly. It assumes that you were paid and your boss would have had to have paid the tax and NI at the time.

HMRC will see the that you received a single payment in January. But that is your bosses problem.

Not sure how any of that affects the visa. Take it to its extreme, if you were paid a whole year's salary on the 5 April and exceeded £18600 do you meet the requirement or not?

If your boss was doing the paye correctly he would have had to have sent 6 month's worth of nil returns and now he is going to some how back date it 7 months. I think that HMRC will be asking him a few questions.

AS my wife's FLR comes up in about 6 months I want to be a well prepared as possible and a few questions appear amgiguous. Questions 4.1 to 4.4 in particular regarding children. Has anybody done a recent application and how did you answer 4.1 to 4.4:

Q 4.1 Do you and your partner have any children together?

Yes or No

Q 4.2 Do you have any children whose parent is not your sponsor?

Yes or No

Q 4.3 Does your sponsor have any children living in the UK whose parent is not you?

Yes or No

Q 4.4 If you have answered yes to questions 4.1, 4.2 and/or 4.3 provide details of these children in the table below.

My wife has a dependent son living in Thailand as he could't get a visa and I have one dependent son living with me from previous marriage so we answer no to 4.1 and yes to 4.2 and 4.3.

4.4 goes on to ask:

Q "q" Has “your” child visited other countries eg on holiday? Please list all countries “your” child has visited since they entered the UK.

Q "s" If your sponsor is not the other the other parent of this child, provide details of the other parent. Include name, where they live, their nationality and their level of contact or parental responsibility.

With respect to my wife's son question q presumes that her son is in the UK. As he is not in the UK and is not an applicant do we ignore this question?

With respect to my son since the question says "your child" ie the applicant's child again do I ignore this question. Also since my son didn't enter the UK do I ignore it?

Question s is self explanitory with respect to my wife's son, she gives the detail of her ex. I assume question s is not relevant to my son and I ignore it. Just wonder if it is a strange way of asking for the details of my son's mother.

It is extremely difficult these days to accumulate large sums of used notes. If you are carrying several thousand in 500 Euro notes you will have a lot of explaining to do.

Well I hope that they devote as much effort into tracking drug smugglers and suspected terrorists as they spend on tourists with a few thousand pounds wanting to avoid sky high bank charges.

Yes Jay the Terminal 2 experience was good except for one thing.

We carried quite a lot of cash for our Thai holiday - basically costs of using UK cards in Thailand is now quite high when you add up UK and Thai charges so I felt it was worth the risk. I put the cash in our hand luggage. All went very smoothly until we were on the airbridge to the aircraft. A lady from UKBA introduced herself to my wife. I thought that this was going to be about her passport as per the OP. No, she asked my wife if she was carrying a large amount of cash. I said yes but as it was less than the 10,000 euros equivalent then we didn't need to declare it (or 20k limit as there were 2 of us I suppose). The lady asked me a couple of questions like my employment status etc. She was quite pleasant and concluded that UKBA can confiscate any amount over 1,000 pounds if they suspect the money was obtained illegally and the passenger cannot prove how they got the money.

Anyway it may have all been a coincidence but I'm a bit cynical about that. I think what happened is this, The security systems at Terminal 2 are state of the art. I,m sure that applies to the machine that scanned our hand luggage. Because I was delayed for extra frisking (I always seem to set the bells ringing) my wife got through first and she collected the bag. I think the scanning process picked up the wedge of cash and alerted UKBA who then approached my wife as we were boarding. Any thoughts anyone?

Given what I already posted this looks more like a scam to me. What right do UKBA have to confiscate cash even as little as £1000. I wonder if the fact that you were with your wife and would have kicked up a stink than she backed off.

I would have been asking to see their id so that I could have reported them.

With 72.3 million arriving and departing passengers a year at Heathrow alone I wish Immigration luck in trying to track one departure. About 50% of those are departures. Now if they where looking for a terrorist it might be worth their while matching all those departures. I hope that they wont waste taxpayers money trying to prove whether one particular Thai wife had left the UK or not.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2711033/Gatwick-PCSO-guilty-stealing-10-000-passengers-board-planes-threatening-missing-flights-didn-t-hand-cash.html

Gatwick and she stole £10000.

There was case a few years back, cant remember if it was Gatwick or Heathrow, of of of the fake police, PCS or something, who took it upon herself to confiscate large quanties of cash from vulnerable foriegn travellers on the pretext of being illegal to export cash. In frar of not getting on their flight the people handed over the cash.

I will try and dig out a link

I wasn't best pleased with T2 arrivals. One hour for the bags to arrive on top of a 45 minute late arrival. I was on the verge of leaving and coming back the next day to get the bags.

I don't wont to over complicate the FLR application and taking a new test seemed to be more straight forward, even if it has cost an additional £145. That is money for old rope. £145 for a 10 minute test but she now has a Trinity certificate.

On the latest application date I am not expecting to exceed it but given how difficult it was to get the settlement application done I was expecting the same with the FLR. Having looked at the form whilst there are some wildly ambiguous questions it doesn't look too bad.

I have a few months to address the ambiguity.

If the FLR is being turned around in 8 weeks then it might not be worth considering the fast track route. I just have nightmares about the FLR being the same as the settlement process.

I will post my visa form questions seperately as I am sure other people found the questions ambiguous and I want this to go smoothly.

I need to start planning my wife's FLR visa. Her 2.5 years expires on the 15 July this year so I understand she can apply 28 days before and I make that the 17 June. Her passport expires between those 2 dates so she intends to go to Thailand to renew her passport before making the application.

What happens if she doesn't submit the application by the 15 July?

She got her settlement visa based on a Bulats test and I understand that is no longer accepted. What test does she now have to take?

We had hoped to travel in August or September but I am assuming that the FLR will take months to approve. I read about a fast track application done in person, is that still available and how soon can that be arranged after submitting the application and the cost?