Richard W

If her bags are checked through and intends to remain airside for 20 hours, then, as RabC advises, no visa is required.

Are you sure of this interpretation? There's a summary list of UK visa requirements that looks ominous. For airside transit, which is what she would be doing, one requirement is that she "have a confirmed onward flight departing the same day from the same airport".

I wasn't sure what 'same day' meant, so I did some digging and found [url=https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/document-checks-and-charges-for-carriers]Document Checks and Charges for Carriers. In the linked to PDF, which is at Version 7, I found that the corresponding condition was more clearly expressed, in Section 2.6, as, "have a confirmed onward booking, to a destination outside the United Kingdom before 23.59 hours the same day from the same airport – i.e. Heathrow, Gatwick or Manchester".

I think she needs a visa for the UK.

I'm not sure who told you the last part, now you have 5 days after your ceremony to return you BRP or face a fine of up to £1000.

People who panicked when they suddenly discovered that naturalisation seemed set to cost them paid for flights.

I think there's a risk that at some stage resident permits will be checked against databases before boarding; I've no idea when it will come into effect.

At present, it seems that certificates of naturalisation are being accepted, even though the Immigration Act 1971 was changed to stop them being used! The first people who were hit by the invalidation of residence permits after naturalisation were allowed through despite apparently having no evidence of citizenship in them.

It seems that liaison between the Passport Office (HMPO) and UKVI has improved - the HMPO can now find out when people had ILR. This is very relevant for children recently born in the UK to people on ILR who have had to surrender their resident permits and therefore lost the evidence that their children were born British.

There are also reports of people newly naturalised being advised to retain their residence permits for travel after naturalisation. The advice may be coming from normally unreliable sources such as a Home Office helpline.

The consulate in London is easy to get too and we applied on the Monday and had the passport back with visa on Wednesday. The only down side is you have to write and ask for an appointment, which they should give you within 2 weeks of receiving your letter. Most of the visa form does not apply to you as your wife is going with you.

What sort of marriage certificate did you use, and how old were the various documents to prove the marriage?

Since 1 April 2003, following an amendment to the Netherlands Nationality Act of 1985, Dutch subjects with dual nationality will lose their Dutch citizenship if they hold a foreign citizenship and reside outside the Kingdom of the Netherlands or the European Union for ten years.

Britain has had laws like that for naturalised citizens, though back in the days when a woman's British nationality depended on her husband's.

Indeed, without fresh legislation, primary or secondary, wives in the situation of the OP's wife but naturalised from late 2017 (more likely 2018) onwards could start to lose their British nationality for living outside the UK. The mechanism would be as follows:

• ILR achieved as a wife is achieved under the condition that "the applicant and their partner must intend to live together permanently in the UK" (Immigration Rule E-LTRP.1.10, applicable to the 5- and 10-year routes.)
• British nationality is granted on the basis of that ILR.
• Husband and wife depart to Thailand.
• Home Secretary deduces that this was their plan all along - live in the UK long enough to get British nationality, and then retire to Thailand while retaining the right to come to the UK.
• ILR was therefore achieved by misrepresentation - either fraud or concealment of a material fact, and therefore the wife is deprived of British nationality.

The only weak point in that chain is the deduction that the original plan was to leave the UK.

OP as a British citizen do you have to return to the UK every 2 years...think carefully before you answer and the answer is the same for your wife if she had a British passport

The Thai lady rumour mill or your wife is confused and most likely referring to maintaining PR in a country versus citizenship, not the same thing

The second paragraph is correct.

However, the notion pooh-poohed in the first paragraph is not absurd. Let me quote a paragraph from Wikipedia:

Since 1 April 2003, following an amendment to the Netherlands Nationality Act of 1985, Dutch subjects with dual nationality will lose their Dutch citizenship if they hold a foreign citizenship and reside outside the Kingdom of the Netherlands or the European Union for ten years.

Britain has had laws like that for naturalised citizens, though back in the days when a woman's British nationality depended on her husband's.

I have two nephews born in Bangkok and getting passports was only a matter of taking the right paperwork to the right place at the right time and waiting for it to be processed. The arrangements are a bit different to those a few years ago but the general rules are the same.

A major complication is that the father lives in Britain, but mother and daughter live in Thailand. (Also note that we are assuming that the father is British and was born in the UK.) Ideally it would be the mother who applied for the British passport for the daughter. I have grave doubts as to the mother's ability to cope with a British passport application unaided. Remember, British citizens don't have a right to a British passport. If their guardians can't jump through the hoops, then no passport.

I can only see four options:

• British passport.
• Visitor's visa
• Settlement visa
• Certificate of entitlement to right of abode

For the passport option, research the current timings. As has been noted, it's the proper way to do things, and might not be the slowest. There may be issues with proof of address for the OP, especially if he cannot be considered resident in Thailand.

The next two options could fail because the daughter's British. If her being British is ignored, then a visitor's visa should be refused unless the OP can convincingly lie that she will return to Thailand. I believe a settlement visa would fail because the OP's claim to have sole responsibility is likely to be rejected. A settlement visa is far and away the most expensive. If either succeeded, the daughter's British passport could then be applied for in slower time.

The CoE to RoA is also legitimate, though more expensive than a passport. Compare the timings. Once the daughter is in Britain, the Thai passport can be replaced once it seems that she would benefit from having a British passport. Once the old Thai passport has been cancelled (or expired beyond hope of extension), a British passport can be applied for. So, research the timings on this option.

If you mention all the offences - overstay, hiding it, and being refused twice, I'd say the chances were fair to good. At least, a few years ago, immigration offences that led to bans were being ignored for settlement applications. If you hid the offences or refusals, I'd say the chances were poor.

The sponsor is normally the husband. Indeed, I believe it cannot be anyone but the applicant's partner.

How, exactly, would a British citizen "lose"(sic) their Nationality and have their "passport facility" withdrawn ?

More detail is needed to support your claim !

Dual nationals can, and do, lose British nationality if they are involved (balance of probabilities appears to be the standard of proof) in various heinous acts, such as terrorism or serious, organised crime. Those who have obtained British citizenship by fraud can be stripped of it even though it makes them stateless - this has happened to several Albanians who pretended to be refugees from Kosovo.

A Thai lady with a non-British passport in her maiden name and a British passport in her married name will now be routinely refused a renewal of her British passport - this has happened to a friend of ours, though she is (almost) trapped in Britain. This new policy has most prominently been striking newly naturalised ladies in Britain trying to get their first passports. Unfortunately, the evidence is on other forums, so I can't link to it. I haven't heard of anyone overseas falling foul of it.

I believe Americans who are in arrears of child maintenance are liable to have passport renewals refused. I don't know the details of what happens if they are overseas at the time.

I'm not an expert , but it might have been sufficient to have carried and shown the Expired Thai Passport with the arrival stamp in it .

Now this is interesting. After airline staff refused boarding because of the empty UK passport ("where is the entry stamp?") we said the entry stamp is on the old Thai passport, which is expired, and we had to show the old passport. That did not help anything though.

The general rule for most countries is that one enters and leaves on a passport for the same nationality, unless you acquire the local nationality while there. I don't know what the rules are for when one loses that nationality while in Thailand, or has one's passport facility withdrawn. (The latter could happen to British citizens if their current passports aren't all in the same name.)

Well, I've finally worked out the motivation for the red part of the declaration:

The Commission intends to adopt a proposal to complement Directive 2004/38 on free movement of Union citizens in order to exclude, from the scope of free movement rights, third country nationals who had no prior lawful residence in a Member State before marrying a Union citizen or who marry a Union citizen only after the Union citizen has established residence in the host Member State.

It's a point by point reversal of the Metock judgment, which answered three questions posed by the Irish High Court, summed up by Wikipedia as:

• Does Directive 2004/38 ("the Citizenship Directive") permit a member state to maintain a prior lawful residence requirement, as did Irish legislation?
• Does Article 3(1) of the Citizenship Directive 2004/38 include within its scope of application a non-EU national who is a spouse of a Union citizen who resides in the host member state, and then resides in the host member state with the Union citizen as his/her spouse irrespective of when or where their marriage took place or how the non-EU national entered the host member state?
• If the answer to 2 was negative, whether Article 3(1) includes non-EU nationals who entered the host member state independently of their spouse and subsequently married them there.

The judgement said 'No, Yes, N/A'. When implemented as law, the declaration will answer 'Yes, not necessarily, no'. I'm not entirely sure where 'before marrying a Union citizen' comes from; I think it's to block loopholes.

At the time of the judgement, the British Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006 also contained a requirement for lawful residence in an EEA state - unless one could make it to a British port or border post. (Plane and ship operators are good at protecting British ports from immigrants without visas.)

The Danish prime minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, seems very happy about it:

We get Metock ruling rolled back. Now we roll the legal situation back to what it was before the Metock judgment was rendered.

Source: http://www.ruleoflaw.dk/utopien-om-prae-metock/ (Danish; I can't find any reports in English.)

David Cameron is quite pleased about:

And an end to the ridiculous situation where EU nationals can avoid British immigration rules when bringing their families from outside the EU.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-statement-following-european-council-meeting-19-february-2016

This change is quite a blow against the first stage of Surinder Singh.

Now, the white(?) paper says, "all non-EU nationals will have to meet the immigration controls of the first Member State that they enter", but I haven't yet worked out how the regulations could be worded so that they didn't permanently lose the right of free movement.

Nothing like govt hoops to jump through for 5 years to keep you on your toes eh! Threat of deportation and the end of your family life in the UK.

Got a half Thai child? Who cares!?

Actually, a half-Thai child excuses you from meeting the threshold at the subsequent stages, at the cost of 10 years of visas and NHS surcharges.

Having wrecked your health scraping together the £18,600, your newly arrived wife can then help with meeting the threshold for the next stages.

The Immigration Rules are here, and the basic web page for applications is here, which should lead you here. Note that you are dictated to by Appendix FM, not Part 8, of the Immigration Rules.

The EU had the humanity to agree that a married couple should be able to stay together, something the UK government was party to. The UK government however is only prepared to observe this agreement with EU nationals and deny UK nationals.

On a point of information, the UK government has arranged for the withdrawal of this concession, at least to a very large extent. Under the terms of the declaration:

The Commission intends to adopt a proposal to complement Directive 2004/38 on free movement of Union citizens in order to exclude, from the scope of free movement rights, third country nationals who had no prior lawful residence in a Member State before marrying a Union citizen or who marry a Union citizen only after the Union citizen has established residence in the host Member State.

While it's meaning is as clear as mud, a Frenchman will not more be able able to being a Thai to Britain than can an Englishman. (Indeed, the Frenchman now may have to have been here 5 years himself.) It's not clear on the import of non-EEA spouses from within the EEA. I think the declaration is essentially a reversal of Metock, so that loophole may be open.

Passports can be extended by adding an official stamp saying the validity has been extended. In this case, a 5-year passport was converted to a 10-year passport. You may be aware that expatriates' British passports were being slightly extended in the passport crisis of Summer 2014. It's an old trick.

"your child lives permanently with another parent or carer who’s British or settled in the UK and not your partner, and you want to help raise them (you’ll need to prove you have access to your child in person, either agreed with the other parent or carer, or by a court order)"

I'd be a little leary of trying to claim that one.

Thanks, Apetley. That should reassure my friend. My wife got a similar stamp when she extended her first passport and changed to her married name.

Now it's a £308 one-off charge per employee not to frighten off new employers from employing certain people with a demonstrable right to work.

We are getting ahead of ourselves and away from the question.

I am solely concerned with FLTR.

Is the income requirement £18,600 or £18,000?

It's £18,600 - at the moment.

Longer term I will have no problem as I will have savings £30,000+ (I am selling a second property in France) plus income of £17,300+.

What I want to know....for FLT ...I have around £17,300 pa income.PLUS child benefit and CTC of arounf £3,500.

a) is CB & CTC allowed towards income?

if not, are they really so strict that if my income is £17,300 they would refuse/deport my wife? even though we have a British son?

Have you looked at FM Section 1,7? I have, and I see no hint that child benefit or child tax credits will be counted. I wouldn't expect them to, either.

If you two don't meet the financial requirement, they won't remove your wife, but will transfer her from the 5-year route to the 10-year route, because of the anchor baby.

Do you have a financial year for your consultancy earnings? The financial year will matter for your wife's earnings if she works irregularly. Remember that she will have to demonstrate the A2 level in English for the further leave to remain, though I expect the anchor baby will still work if she fails.

What exactly are you asking?I

If the woman has a valid Thai passport it can be used for travel and entry into Thailand

I'm asking how she can use her Thai passports to enter the UK. If the passports were in the same name, we know she could just present both, though many carry the intermediate passports to be on the safe side.

@gprit:

It may be worth sending your wife out to work to top up your joint income. However, if you two have a British citizen child, the child is an anchor baby - you'll be allowed to follow the 10-year route on Article 8 grounds. However, I'm not sure what happens if you die en route.

For a Thai national, what is the procedure for travelling on a Thai passport in her married name while using an old (pre-2012) ILR stamp or vignette in an old passport in her maiden name? How will airline check-in staff and British immigration officers be persuaded that the passports refer to the same person? A Thai immigration officer would see that the national ID numbers were the same and note that only the names were discrepant.

I'm asking for a friend, but I do know that the option of getting a biometric residence permit is unacceptable.

BTW, as you should know, if a Brit living in Thailand cannot meet the Thai financial requirement then s/he has the option of border runs; an option not available in the UK.

Well, technically, they are also available for EU spouses in the UK. Indeed, I haven't heard of any British citizens getting the proper visas for their EU spouses, and the UK government doesn't yet bother to check that the visa runs actually take place.