Mig15

That looks like what we will have to do. Though it is not a good outcome as she is at entry 1 level after 2 years hard work - some people don't learn languages as quickly as others. The LitUK test is at entry 3 - there is a difference.

thanks,

Yes, thats right. We have just got a further two years. Rugby or Northampton colleges - the two neariest to us don't do the ESOL with Citizenship.

I can’t find a college where they understand or provide the ESOL with citizenship materials. My wife has been here for two years and has now past the Entry 1 Speaking and Listening but now the college tells me the course does not contain these materials even though it is a recognized course - University of Cambridge.

Thanks I thik I found the pages now.

My wife and stepson are coming up to the time when we need to renew their settlement visas. They will have been resident in the UK for two years with no problems. Will we be able to get indefinite leave to remain now? My wife is not at the stage where she would be able to pass an English test or the Life in the UK test. She has been learning English but finds it very difficult.

Can we get another two year visa? I can’t see info on the UK visa site about reapplying and I think that indefinite leave to remain now not as easy to get.

Thanks for your help.

There are lots of Cambodians who aren't Khmer and vice versa.

My wife is Khemer Thai. So maybe I could put in a claim.

Thanks for that Pseacraft!

You say 350,000 bhat but how much per Rai (acre) or what is the total Rai size

I don't know. I will be going up to Si Sa Ket so I will be able to have a look.

Can anyone tell me what this document is called in Thai so I know my wife understands?

Cheers

Sorry I did not get chance to look at these replies. Will I be able to sign the form in Bangkok or will I have to go up to Si Sa Ket?

Thanks

Yes, they are talking about something in the region of 350,000 baht but I don’t know how big the plot is. It is in Si Sa Ket province. I would guess they only get one harvest of rice up there. In fact I am surprised they can grow rice up there it seems so dry the times I have been. But she said they do.

By the way I don’t expect they will make that money back but I don’t mind if it keeps the family in employment and feeds her mother as well.

I know there were restrictions on Thai women who were married to foreign men buying land at one time. Has it changed?

My wife, who has changed her name to my name, has been saving up while we have been in the UK. She plans to buy a plot of land near her village and let her daughter and her husband grow rice. She said they can give her half the profits. Sounds like a good idea.

Will we run up against problems with these restrictions? With the credit crunch in the UK the price of houses are falling. The price of rice and diesel has gone up. What is happening to the price of land in Thailand? Is it going up, because people want to grow more rice or down because there is not so mush money around?

The pound seems quite strong against the baht. 65ish is that the rate we will get in Thailand now?

Thanks for your responses. I have always used my HSBC Debit and Credit cards in Thailand but they are often restricted to 10,000 baht a day. Obviously I will be needing to draw money out for living expenses as well.

I have transferred money in the past to her daughters account. I think I may be best off doing a combination of all the things suggested. Transfer some, take some and ATM some.

Cheers

So we have been in the UK for a year. My wife and son have two year visas to stay in the UK. Things have gone well all in all. We are going back for a holiday.

I have a few questions that some of you may be able to answer.

1. My wife has been saving up to take some money back to the family to buy a plot of land so they can grow stuff and be self sufficient. This is mostly to help support her elderly mother. So my question is: what is the best way to move some money to my wife’s Thai bank? Can we get a bank check that we pay into her account or can she just pay in a personal check on her UK HSBC account? About £4500.

2. This may sound a bit strange, but do we need to take the TB free certificates we got last year with us again? I am imagining coming back through British Immigration and having to queue up for them to have chest x-rays again.

Any other problems we may come up against?

I had a quick look at some of the posts on that link. It seems that the court will make a judgement on the information provided as to who has sole responsibility. I hope that the information that convinced the local authority in Thailand will convince them as well. I don’t plan to send my application off just yet.

“Sorry for piggybacking your thread MIG15, but thanks Mossfinn, its all useful stuff for me too.” No problem – I haven’t had a chance to look at the responses till today so I’m glad someone has!

My wife has Sole Custody. We went through it all in Thailand to get the visa. She had to go to the local court in Si Sa Ket and told the people there the father was un-contactable. She also told them that he had abandoned her and her three children. They seem to have taken a dim view of that and awarded her the Sole Custody.

They are both on settlement visas for two years. ILR now costs £1500 I think and maybe we will not have to pay that if he is already a British Citizen (?)

I hope to deal with it myself without legal help – I did it all in Thailand so I hope I can manage it here!

My wife and I and her son – 13 – have been living in the UK now for just under a year. My wife has recently suggested the possibility of me adopting him – prompted by discussions with her friend here. Her friend has provided us with some documents and leaflets about adopting in the UK.

The boy’s father is – in Thai law – out of the picture as my wife has sole guardianship. I had all our paperwork translated and certified before we came back to the UK last year. This included the documentation she needed to get the sole guardianship.

I guess we could do it without much problem. My thoughts are, 1. he will have to take my name, and 2. will become a UK citizen. This may be a good thing as it will mean that we don’t need to go through the process of getting indefinite leave to remain for him in a few years time.

But how will this affect his Thai citizenship? Can he just keep his Thai passport and use that to go back when we go for visits? Is dual nationality possible? If I was him, I would not want to give up the right to go back to and live in my native country in the future, as his sisters are there and the extended family.

Does anyone have any comments or experience of this?

Thanks for your help.

Thanks for your help!

I am trying to transfer some money by my internet account to my daughter-in-law’s account.

We need the Swift/BIC code which we have for the bank and an IBAN number for the bank account.

However, in Thailand they don’t use the IBAN so is the number I use just the account number or does it have some additional country code in front?

Thaks for the info.

50k - I wish!

Hi, anyone know how much it is these days to do an international money transfer from my UK HSBC bank account to my Krung Thai bank account in Bangkok. Just for a few hundred GBP?

Finally after all the work and all the worry our visas have been granted. If you read my previous posts our application was complicated by the fact that we wanted to take my step son with us and we did not have a letter of consent from the father. What we did was to make sure that my wife had custody – this is written on the divorce certificate second page – and my wife had not been given a copy of that at the divorce.

So, she had to go up to the Ampur again and find a copy – which they had at the office. I wrote them a letter and got it translated asking them for the relevant documentation. This was all provided to my wife. We got a letter saying that the Ampur office had conducted an investigation to see if she had been the sole support for the boy. We got a letter and statements showing that the father was not available / location unknown with two witnesses to this as well as my wife’s statement.

I got all the documents translated and certified into English and submitted them to the VAC with the application forms etc. The guy at the VAC said smilingly that I had wasted my money on the translations as they could read them. OK about 60 GBP but I thought “I’m just forking out 1000 quid to you, don’t talk to me about wasting money!”

The other point of a possible problem is that I don’t have a job to go back to. I do have some money left to me after my mother died so that must have been sufficient.

I can see why an agent is a good idea for many people as my wife and I put in a hel_l of a lot of work to get the applications and the supporting documents together. It is so difficult for me as I had to get all the documents translated into English so I could read them. So I don’t think of the translations as a total loss because we my need some of them in the UK anyway.

The numbers of people going through the VAC must be tremendous. They were very polite and helpful. I would say the experience is better than that at the Embassy itself!

The numbers of people who put in applications that are not going to be accepted must be very high too. I encountered two women at the TB hospital who asked me to read the letter of refusal one of them had got last year. So they were getting a TB test for a new application for her to join her husband in the UK and did not know why they had been refused last time.

I sent an email to the British Embassy today and the answer was that the passports are being sent back to the VAC tomorrrow. But it does not exactly say we got the visa!

I gess we got them! But she does not exactly say so!! Maybe they can't tell me directly?

What do you think?

Thanks I just emailed them as nothing again today. It is putting incredable stress on my wife and I as I need to get back for job interviews and we are sitting around with a house full of stuff we don't know if they will need for the next six or seven weeks.

We put in our applications in a week last Friday and it says 3 - 5 working days. How long are they really likely to take? I keep checking but just the same message - "Applications sent to the British Embassy." Travel plans all gone astray. It also seems impossible to contact them by phone.

Cheers