rasg

10 hours ago, Bradleyrussell said:

Hey, I was wondering what are the chance of my Thai wife getting a visit visa, on this circumstances:

 

Her reasons to return back to Thailand

 

1. She has saving account of 20,000THB.
2. She has two life insurance under her name. One is 15 years and the other one is 2 years.
3. She works at Suvarnabhumi Airport, at a Japanese restaurant. However she only started that job a week ago. But her employer are aware and are willing to give her two weeks off - as she had mention that before on her interview.
4. She has apartment rental agreement in Bangkok under her and her friends name.
5. She has a motorbike in finance, that she pays out monthly instalment.
6. Both her parents are deceased; she has their death certificate translated into English with official government stamp.
7. My wife family tie is her grandmother who is 74 years old, who is her responsibility. She looks after her by giving petty cash, buying food, medicine etc. Her grandmother owns a piece of land that she gives out to rent; my wife handles that responsibility. Before my wife moved to Bangkok, she lived her whole life at her grandmother house with her. She is registered at that address.
8. As my wife works in Bangkok, she has hired a worker from Myanmar to look after her grandmother. 

 

About me

 

I have been living in my parent's house for the past two years. I got married last month; I came back to England last week. I am currently unemployed with P45 to proof. I want my wife to come to the UK for two weeks to meet my family and to show her England before I find a job and get busy. 

 

Sponsorships/Finances

 

My parents will takes full responsibility of my wife; by buying her inward/outward plane ticket, providing accommodation at their home, food, other expenses and private medical treatment just in case.

 

My parents were already aware of our marriage. After we got married we went to South Korea. Where my parents paid for all the accommodation at hotels, I have proof of payment with their names. 

 

Lastly they also paid for our flights to Krabi in Thailand and the resort we stayed at. 

 

Do you think my wife has a chance of getting two weeks visit visa to UK?

There is no reason why she shouldn’t get a visit visa if you fulfill the requirements and put a good application together.

You need to show proof of your relationship, show you have sufficient funds to pay for the trip and have accommodation for her when she comes to the UK and also the difficult one. Her reasons why she will return to Thailand at the end of the holiday.

Her motorbike, her life insurances and parents death certificates are not that relevant to the application. If you use her job as her reason to return you must emphasise that she took the job on, on the basis that she would be allowed the holiday and I think her employer can expect a call from UKVI to confirm it. It's pretty unusual for a reason to return to be a job where she has only worked for the company for a week or so though and I wonder of it will be enough. If her employer letter is in Thai, the ECO will speak in Thai. If in English, they will speak in English.

Your joint hotel bookings, flights, skype/whatsapp logs and marriage certificate should be enough to prove your relationship. 

If you are self employed, earn over £18,600 pa and submit annual accounts it's pretty straightforward. I just emailed the guidelines to my accountant and let him sort it out. Cost me £100.

Let's hope you get there in time.

16 minutes ago, rubarb said:

It seems true i have to transfer my premium bonds savings to my normal bank 6 months before trying for a settlement visa

I wouldn’t be too sure about that. I'm not sure about this but presumably the Premium Bonds are in your name? It normally takes about 48 hours to get your money out and I wonder, as the money in the bonds is in your name and under your control and you move it to a normal savings account if you will have to wait six months. The financial guidelines might answer the question.

12 minutes ago, rubarb said:

It seems ok to have them for a tourist visa application but not a settlement visa.

That's right. All you need to show is that you have sufficient funds for a visit visa. A settlement visa is a totally different thing.  

Presumably you are relying on the £62,500 savings route to get the settlement visa and you don't have an annual income of £18,600?

If she has been married before or has changed her name you will also need to supply the divorce docs and name change documents with English translations.

The last time I checked quite recently, Premium Bonds cannot be used as proof of savings. It's ridiculous as you can get the cash from them in around 48 hours.

Not the way it was written but that's fine. Hope the visa is successful and soon.

For you maybe. If somebody is in the North East or the South it's a lot of faffing and can involve flights and hotel stays.

You still have to supply the similar information whether it's on computer or not.

Fine with either. You don't need to supply loads of bank statements. Just show you have sufficient funds to pay for the trip. Just show the latest statement. They don't need the ins and outs of it.

In your shoes I would supply your wife's bank statements at all unless you are very sure that all is ok with them. I have seen too many visas fail in the last couple of years when the ECO picks the applicants statements and incomings and outgoings apart and refuses the visa.

What did you do the last time? It was successful. Do the same! As I explained above you do only have to show that you have enough money to pay for the trip. How long is the holiday you are requesting?

1 hour ago, Mister Fixit said:

I just checked the prices for the long term visas.  Not at all very cheap compared to doing one annually.  

 

A 1 year visit visa (actually any 6 months in one year) is £95 (or I paid $128 at current exchange rates) but a 2 year visa costs much more at £361, a 5 years costs £665 and a 10 year is £822.  It gets progressively cheaper, but a 2 or 5 year visa wouldn't be cost-effective compared to doing single applications as necessary.

 

People can still only stay for a maximum of 6 months in any one year so it hardly seems worth it compared to doing a single application when you want or need to or have the funds to.

Debatable as you have to schlepp to Bangkok or Chiang Mai each time and faff with documents etc etc etc.

In the end, all you can do is apply and hope. I wouldn’t mention anything abut learning of the Nepali culture. Just request one months holiday or she is unlikely to get the visa. You need to show sufficient funds to pay for the trip, prove that you are in a relationship, show her reasons to return to Thailand and show that she will have accommodation while she is in the UK. A well written sponsor letter might just sway the ECO and it night not. All you can do it try. 

I think it's this one:

https://visas-immigration.service.gov.uk/product/family-routes

47 minutes ago, Rob180 said:

It appears that I did send everything to the wrong address. I sent it to Durham, which I think was on the Guidance Notes. I didn't scan anything, I sent everything in the post. I didn't know you could just scan them. The whole process and the way you can't find specific answers to questions anywhere without spending days searching just bores me into oblivion now. That's probably why I ended up posting it all, to just get it out my face ????

 

 

I sent my wife's first FLR docs to Durham and that was the right thing to do up until March/April this year when they changed the system. One of the reasons I hang around forums like this is I get to know about changes to the requirements or systems fairly quickly. I find just asking a question or two on the forums and getting up to date answers sends me in the right direction when I start putting an application together for my wife. FLR this year is a good example. My guess is that you were using the wrong guidance notes. On the FLR online application itself there is no reference to the guidance notes at all and I did have to do a bit of digging. The latest notes (FM-SE) were updated in April and I know of others who were using them from 2016. The new system worked fine for us and I prefer it but when we attended the centre in Reading, only to be told that UK wide it had crashed for four hours. We were fortunate and as the big queue in front of us fell by 50% because people had other commitments it meant that we were able to have some lunch and pop back to submit the visa.

Have you heard back on your application yet? My wife's took just over four weeks. A huge improvement on the seven weeks that her first FLR took. My guess is that the caseworker has everything on screen in front of them rather than wading through a mountain of documents.  

Seems we are on the same page then.????????

1 hour ago, Tony M said:

Don't tar all agents with the same brush, especially if that agent is maybe offering a "no visa, no fee" deal.  My opinion only, of course.

An OISC accredited visa company is fine because you can expect quality advice. The others? Somehow I doubt it as anybody can set up as a visa company offering advice etc in Thailand. In the UK I am pretty sure you need to be qualified.

I would still apply for the visa for the OP's girlfriend using the £6K but request a shorter holiday. IMHO and it;s only my opinion, it is not an ECO's job to decide if I want to spend a third of my savings on a holiday for my girlfriend. I spend a lot more than £2K on a one month holiday travelling around Thailand a few months after I met her. (A heck of lot more since we married and went for settlement!) Is it in the ECO's guidelines? If the visa was refused I would ask for a review if that was all the money I had.

Wow. Do you know how long was requested for the visa application that was refused?

10 hours ago, Tony M said:

Not entirely correct.  The OP's wife doesn't have to do everything in Thailand. There are now other options. See this from VFS:

Thanks for posting this. A lot of this is very new from when I last looked just a few weeks ago. It still doesn’t alter the main point that the applicant has to attend VFS in Thailand to submit biometrics etc. Having submitted my wife's 2nd FLR at the end of April using the new document self upload system, I wouldn’t want to do it any other way. The upload system in Thailand is not very good yet from what I have read about others experience though.

She will have to go to Bangkok to submit biometrics etc. I think you might also be able to do it it Chiang Mai too. No doubt somebody else will confirm that. Documents can be scanned yourself and uploaded but from what I have read on here the system is not great yet. (It's very new.) The alternative is to have VFS scan them for you. You take the originals home with you. Your wife has to do everything in Thailand. If you are in that much of a hurry you can pay for the express service for and extra £680, if I remember the figure correctly.

They definitely don't have the inhibitions exhibited by many western women.

2 minutes ago, teo99 said:

Hi members

I about to make a visitors visa to the UK for my Thai girlfriend of almost 3 years  and I would appreciate some advice,

my situation is  that I’m awaiting a knee replacement operation and cannot show pay slips from an employer,

we plan on getting married next year and my family all wish to meet her before hand,  I own my own home, 3 bedroom house,

and prove I can accommodate her , she works full time in a hotel as receptionist, and has permission form her

boss to take time off for travel, she has little by way of savings in her bank account as she sends most of her salary

home to support her 7 yr old son, i have a limited income of around £1,350 per month from sickness benefit and

and private sickness insurance, and about £6000 in savings,  so, my question is would that be considered enough to

sponsor her visit , flight and her upkeep, I was thinking of relinquishing the task of making the  application to an agency

but was advised not to pay for something I can do myself, I was also told that my son can sponsor her visit to meet my family

he is gainfully employed with a good salary and is prepared to write a invitation letter  as well, I would appreciate any help

given my circumstances,

There is no set amount needed for a visit visa and showing a balance of £6K is more than enough as long as you are not planning a six month holiday with your girlfriend staying in five star hotels.????

If you use her job as her reason to return to Thailand you will need a letter from her boss explaining she will have her job open when she returns. If the letter is in Thai and UKVI call to confirm any information they will speak in Thai. If the letter is in English, they will speak in English.

A copy of your last mortgage statement will show you own your house.

Any joint flight tickets, hotel bookings, skype/whatsapp logs to prove you are a couple along with anything else you can think of.

If you can avoid it I wouldn’t show her bank statements. Just expla9n she is paid in cash and most of the money is sent home to support her son.

Lastly a good truthful sponsor letter explaining all of it.

Save your money on a visa company. 90% of the work will be done by you any way. Just ask away on here. Many have been through it.

10 hours ago, oporhatch said:

Was not going to comment....but I have known them delayed /rejected unless the spouse can prove her own funds

My conclusion is that if things went pear-shaped in the UK, they would like her to have enough available funds of her own to get home. 

Whether that is the reason or not I do not know .

 

Thought I would mention it   - as it has happened ,

 

Please do not hit me with comments stating this is rubbish etc !!!!!....just stating what I have seen happen

Not in my experience. My then girlfriend had two visit visas and didn't supply bank statements or show that she had any money at all. I was her sponsor and I showed that I could afford her trip to the UK.

Not necessary if she has a sponsor. Even if she has a sponsor bank statements may not be necessary. You only need to show sufficient funds to pay for the trip. I never showed bank statements for my, then, girlfriend's accounts for her two visit visas. Just explained that she was paid in cash each month and the money was allocated and spent on rent or money going home to her family before it went near her bank account.

It worked before and second visit visas are easier to get imho. If she didn’t give a reason to return she had no reason to rush back to the UK either.

In my then girlfriend's case she had no difficulty getting a two year visit visa before the first had expired because we wanted her to come to the UK for the Christmas period. She was made redundant from her hotel job while she was here in the UK on the first visa. Because her reason to return had disappeared, she stayed for 18 weeks instead of the original 4 weeks she requested. We simply explained that in my sponsor letter in the second application.