Mercury

Will this test replace the KoL test and get rid of the exorbitant fees to translate ILE subject to KoL into ILR ?

Well obviously on only 16k a month before bills she doesn't have the funds to buy a plane ticket or support herself and without evidence to the contrary, I'll guess that her bank balance shows near zero, even if her salary is paid in each month. She does have a job though and though is provides a somewhat meagre salary, it is some small reason to return to Thailand. Has she any other ties ?

What sort of relationship do you think others think you have ? You went to Thailand, presumably to look at the temples, and found a girl who you stayed with for 2 months, about a year ago. You have not seen her since then, nearly a year ago, but have kept in contact. You are not really her boyfriend are you ? Now you want to meet her in a third party country where neither of you appear to have any connections and where she certainly cannot pay her way.

The stress on your finances will be quite large and much larger than were she going to the US to visit you in your home. I think her chances of getting a UK visa are quite poor. She would have to show where she was intending to stay, how it would be paid for, how she would provide for the flights and her spending money etc.

I think you are better off asking her to visit you in the US when she has more than 1 week vacation time. Your standing in your community is presumably good, she has a history of presumably abiding by US visa regulations etc. Surely the easiest place to start. If you had more miles together then fine, but I would be asking whether a relationship even exists. Meet her again, then apply. If you are in Thailand for any time, it might be possible to apply when you are there and get a more considerate response fairly quickly. At least you would know the strength of any relationship after having met her for what will be only the second time.

There is no price list. You are charged whatever the doctor treating you thinks you will pay. He has set charges which the hospital charges him for providing each service and whatever he adds on top is his profit, his personal profit. Thus, you can be charged a different price for the same treatment by the same doctor the following day, simply because he crashed his car on the way home yesterday and needs extra funds to pay for the repairs.

Then they want to sell you all manner of prescription drugs at vastly inflated prices. Have you not noticed that they almost drag you from the consultation room to the check out (yes, it is like a supermarket), without giving you the list of drugs they want to push on you ?

It is a business but a business without fixed prices. Would you enter a restaurant where they charged you according to the way the wind is blowing or how much they thought you were prepared to pay ? No.

Well after many days my tenacious little gilt piglet finally circumed to the obvious. After hand feeding her for ten days, I admit to shedding a tear when I buried her. Some time ago I was accused of being to close to the children, OK, guilty as charged.

Isaanaussie

Couldn't you have eaten it ?

I wanted to buy some industrial machinery. Initial cost was around 1.2m baht and projected servicing and additional machinery (50% chance of purchase) was a total of around 3.5m. Now this was a western company with Thai outlets etc. I was passed to the Thai people from the western company and that was it. No more contact, even after the intervention of the western company. Eventually I told the western company what a shambles their Thai partners were and to be honest, they did not back their partners. I think that speak volumes.

Obviously scan everything and have it online in multiple places. As for originals, copies in at least one place other than the original. As for safes, if you are building a house, have a waterproofed and concrete encased hole put in the ground which has a safe put in it (not these flimsy things) and whose door opens upwards. Can be covered with flooring albeit with some access. Also perhaps have a dummy, easy to remove flimsy safe which they will find first and steal, which has some crap in it and a little money etc.

As stated, the legal route may well take longer than she does to reach 21. However, you can cut some costs. She would have to pass KOL anyway so get her to do that now. Then , when she eventually requests settlement, she will get ILE and you will not have to pay for ILR.

Is study an option ?

If she has 6 months in the UK each year, then if she is 19.6 (taking the mid way point and with the decimals representing months, not tenths), then as she has 4 months left, she will be 19.10 and will have to leave. When she is 20.4 she can return until she is 20.10, return for 2 months until 21 and apply for settlement.

If you could visit her in Thailand during her 6 months back there for a holiday then you'd only have periods of a couple of months apart at a time.

I know this is not perfect but before you head off on a potentially fruitless and expensive legal case, it might be worth considering as it is a viable, though not ideal alternative. In any case, when she applies for settlement, she will have to be in Thailand for around 3 months anyway as she waits for her visa.

Be prepared that if she is required to go back, then it is for 3 or 4 days and it is an early start, around 7am each day. She would most certainly have to remain in Bangkok for this.

I suggest you arrange the initial appointment for a Monday which will give you the paperwork on Friday of the same week if she requires the daily tests and is in the clear. There is no additional cost for the daily tests.

In fact, most applications are successful. The figures for 2009/10 have yet to be published, but in 2008/09 in Thailand out of 2,775 settlement applications, 2,385 were granted; thats 87%.

See Entry Clearance Statistics 2008/09; Thailand's settlement applications are on page 75.

The success rate for family visits (page 37) was 90% and for other visits (page 52) it was 91%.

A look in the archives (2001/02 to 2004/05 and 2005/06 onwards) will show similar results.

Which indicates, to me at least, that provided one prepares properly, obtaining a UK visa, visit or settlement, is not as difficult as some would have people believe.

I think you are right and that many of those who fail are either unrealistic, do not cover the requirements or have a poorly prepared application. If that assumption is true or near true, then it begs the question as to why the waiting time is so long. More staff needed perhaps ?

How did she "know" it was worth 695k and not perhaps 750k ?

Without testing the private market there is no way to compare whether she got the full price or not. I would have thought a dealer would not offer the best price as IMHO they tend to offer quite low prices, though YMMV.

UK Jazz does not come with the option of the 1.5 engine.

A Siam Bank account has a maximum ATM withdrawal limit of Bt200,000 a day which is roughly £4000. Bangkok Bank can go up to Bt500,000 a day. Now I know you would have to sit in the bank, feeding the cards into the machine quite a few times at £500 a go but it would not take that long to get £50,000 out of the ATMs in the UK. With multiple accounts, you could do it in one day !

(and empty the ATM like a fruit machine !)

UK banks only allow ATM withdrawals (anywhere in the world) up to 15,000 baht (at the present exchange rate) per day so this wouldn't work.

Sorry but that is completely incorrect. If your bank has a poor £300 limit per daily withdrawal then yes, you can only withdraw £300/Bt15000 or around $450 or so etc. Many people have ATM cards issued by UK banks with daily withdrawal limits in the £'000s though every ATM is limited to the number of notes it can issue at one time (physical limitation).

£1000 per card per day is easily available from HSBC amongst others and if you move up the league a bit you can get much more than that. Of course, if you bank with an antiquated building society then you may well be restricted to some low amount.

Nothing at all to do with UK banks allowing anything.

A Siam Bank account has a maximum ATM withdrawal limit of Bt200,000 a day which is roughly £4000. Bangkok Bank can go up to Bt500,000 a day. Now I know you would have to sit in the bank, feeding the cards into the machine quite a few times at £500 a go but it would not take that long to get £50,000 out of the ATMs in the UK. With multiple accounts, you could do it in one day !

(and empty the ATM like a fruit machine !)

The cases where I have heard similar to this being done have been with the foreigner working legitimately in Thailand and having a taxable proven income rather than a retirement income for example.

The only thing I could add would be to question just how she will be able to run her business, which is a good reason for her to return to Thailand, if she spends up to half the year in the UK ?

The issue of who would care for the child, if used as a reason why she must return, would presumably also need to be covered.

BA have direct flights from around Bt28k online. You can also phone them in the UK and sometimes that price is better as their internal FX rate sometimes works in your favour.

Eva and Thai also direct.

Bridge,

The advice you and TVE give, free of charge, in this forum is much appreciated, and this forum would be a far poorer place without you. I hope that in his remarks Mercury was referring to the unqualified spivs, not to qualified persons such as yourself.

Many spivs also have qualifications but you are partially correct. I am indeed referring to those who are scammers but those who are qualified and wish to be viewed as professional could take a step ahead of the market and publish a list of standard fees. We all know no two cases are the same as are no two clients but the sheer lack of transparency does not help their case at all. The future is in their hands.

I guess it is a difficult line to tread. One the one hand you need to gain new clients as the nature of the business means there should be no repeat business but on the other hand blurting into every thread suggesting that the OP contact XYZ Visa Co. is more likely to get people's backs up. Again, if a company were transparent and professional I believe they could clean up in the market.

Ankwa,

I mean no disrespect, but perhaps Mercury can answer that for you.

Bridge

No need to be sarcastic. However, if you want to be transparent, does your company publish a basic fee list ?

Having gone through both the housing and financial issues myself recently, I can identify a few points.

If your husband's sister is claiming a reduction in her Council Tax as a single occupant, then she is already breaking the law if there are other occupants in that house. That is a serious issue. You need a bedroom solely for your occupation, which there may be, but if you fail to declare that other people live there, then you would be lying and on those grounds alone, your application could be rejected and it may prove impossible for you to get a settlement visa. You may even be barred for a number of years, for lying.

Your husband has no job. The letter from a prospective employer is only that, prospective, not guaranteed. It will carry weight but the wording will be very important.

You have no money. You have no savings. The only money you have or will have will be a mere £3000 of which there is roughly £700 required for a visa application, £100 for a TB certificate and approximately £1000 for airfares. That leaves just a little over £1000. The minimum income you need to prove, though there are no official minimums, is the level of Income Support which a family in your circumstances, not subject to immigration control would receive. If that figure was £100 and you had £1000 then you would only be able to support yourself for 10 weeks. On that basis, I would suggest your application may very well be refused. Of course, a guaranteed job, starting immediately would help but a prospective job offers no guarantee.

You have not explained how you support yourselves in Thailand. The immigration service will need to know what your husband and you earn now and may very well check up on this. You will be required to submit bank statements showing your income and savings. If you have neither, then again, I suspect your application will most probably fail.

Whilst not totally impossible, I think you have an uphill task to convince them to issue you with a visa as I think they will suspect you will have recourse to public funds.

My advice would be for your husband to go back to the UK alone and get this job. After a couple of month's salary payments have gone into his account and he has registered himself on the Electoral Roll, you can make the application. As applications seem to be taking around 8 weeks to reach a decision, you would need to be prepared to support yourselves in Thailand for another 3 months from now at a minimum. Use the £3000 to get him back to the UK and get this or another job and then your application would move from possible or probable failure to a very good chance of success, if all other aspects are in order.

On the car front, the choice of manual or automatic is of course yours to make. I would always recommend to my pupils that their first car should be a cheap, older car that they can build up experience of driving alone in and that they wont mind receiving a few scrapes and dents. It will also be cheaper to insure. After a couple of years they can then go for something more expensive.

On insurance, you must tell them all material facts. That she has a foreign licence and a GB provisional is a material fact, so you must tell them this. She will, of course, then be insured to drive using both.

Good point again there 7by7 on the double license issue. Just wondering though whether she would always be driving on her Thai license, it being a full license, or whether, when accompanied, with L plates on, she would have the choice as to which license she was driving under ? I assume, if she did not have L plates on, then it would be assumed the Thai license but is that necessarily so ? What is certain is that there is no internet engine which can cope with that eventuality nor I expect the duality of it all and perhaps not even the Thai license issue.

I'm confident enough to go to sleep when she is driving in Thailand, even on long journeys but I share your advice that an older car, on which you can live with a few dents and scrapes etc. is probably the wisest way to go but I find it a Herculean task to try and get one. What Somchai can fix for Bt1000 will cost £X00's in the UK and a new motor needs putting right after a scrape. Slowly but surely I am coming around to the idea that a cheaper, almost throw away car, is a much better alternative but I have to consider the safety, security and reliability of such a model. As I add to the budget to get a second hand car which is good enough, I get ever nearer to the new price for a car I know can do the job. Ah well, back to the net this afternoon and keep on searching.

I'd be really interested in hearing about what UK guys did with their partners after they came to live in the UK, especially on the insurance front.

:)I should have added that I could never have even started the application without the help and support of the people on this forum, its greatly a marvellous forum and my big thanks to everyone who has helped and answered some my sometimes stupid obvious questions!

I totally agree that the resource and experience of people here is invaluable. Perhaps without TV, more would feel obliged to run to visa agents who, in response to email enquiries I have made of them, appear akin to car mechanics who suck in air through their teeth when presented with a non mechanically minded car owner looking for a solution to their car problems and then let out a "oooohh, that is going to be expensive" sort of response.

We don't want to make mistakes with our applications I know but we can do dummy runs, even with the online submission and we can print out the forms and improve our answers before we finally submit our applications.

It is true that near illiterate types with limited ability to fill in a bus pass form will have trouble and they are cannon fodder for the visa agents. They are unlikely to meet here on TV either. Over involvement of the Thai person and allowing them a decision making capacity will have you running to visa agents as well in some cases and that is understandable as a poorly educated Thai woman from a village is likely to be totally overwhelmed by the process, which is in a foreign language to start with. Add in the Thai reverence to authority and all those on the make with "good" advice and you have a recipe to instil a fear which only visa agents can overcome.

You really have to start with the question as to why they refuse to publish their prices. Even the best lawyers in the land will quote a price per hour or day for their basic service and they will advise on additional costs. Email a few agents and you'll never get a price list for a straightforward application. Why ? well I leave that to your imagination but my position is that they find it impossible to justify the massive fees they want, comparative to the actual work involved. Perhaps like some other sales people who will never quote a real price, such as double glazing, the true price is just how much of a mug / victim they think you are are and the price will be as much as they think they can extract from you.

Just one other point, finding an insurance company to insure somebody driving on a foreign licence is very difficult, at least when looking through the on line 'compare' sites. They will give a quote on line but when you phone them up they all say 'no' if on a foreign licence. It's easy to get insurance with a provisional licence but I'm not sure if that person is still insured when driving on the foreign licence.

That is one of my points exactly. She will have both but obviously needs to be insured on the Thai license as she would be driving alone.

Some good additional points there, thanks.

I'm playing with all kinds of ideas on the car front and have just today been to see Hyundai who do some cheap small cars. I went to see the i10 and i20 but the i10 is a flimsy skinny high seated mismatch of a car (though only around £7-9k) and the i20 (around £9-11k net) has a well documented design fault on foot access to the pedals and the fascia being far too pronounced. So they are ruled out !

I am also somewhat worried about the attitude to accidents, scrapes, etc. because there is no Somchai who can fix it all for peanuts and we certainly have no "mai pen rai". Every clip or small bump will end with insurance and you don't end up with an unlucky car as in Thailand but an uninsurable driver ! For that reason, I am revisiting the idea of a circa 3-5 year old Ford Focus for £3-5k which I don't care so much if she scrapes it on a car park wall (within reason), as opposed to a £15-20k Nissan Qashqai which I'd prefer as a longer term motor.

As for getting her to sit a manual test, then that is my immediate reaction, drummed into me since a child, but it is illogical for her in 2010 because I will never buy a manual car and she prefers the ease of driving automatics. I have a manual license but have no use for the manual part. In a straight choice, then yes, get a manual but when we will never use a manual, it seems a little silly to go down that route.

We put photos (all digital) in a MS Word document with notes on what the photo was about (many were obvious, such as Xmas, Songkran etc.) and just printed it out in colour and in duplicate (everything was duplicated) rather than just putting in a bunch of actual photos. I suppose we could have chucked a CD in there as well with everything in digital format but that is all available immediately if they need anything else.

As someone waiting for the outcome of a settlement visa application, I have looked at the appeal process and the associated costs, largely for legal representation. My gut feeling is that addressing the issues in the refusal letter and making a new application is probably, for some, the best option.

As for flights, I have also been looking at direct options. British Airways is around Bt28,000 inclusive o/w on the cheapest days out as far as the middle of September. Some local agents may be able to better that and on occasion, phoning BA can produce a GBP price which is better than the THB one converted. They have agreed that I could pay and have my partner fly one way without my having to show a credit card etc. www.ba.com