My wife will now be living in the UK 5 years next April. We have applied for irish citizenship as I was born and live in Northern Ireland. I dont want to go down the indefinite leave to remain route. Its expensive, complicated and i dont think my wife would pass the life in the uk test or meet the english language requirement. She currently holds cefr level a2.1 which she just passed. We have a child born here in the UK. Now that we have a child do I need to be earning 22400 p/a if we apply for further leave?

 

The irish citizenship is taking its time, we should get it I hope, but maybe not before April when her current further leave to remain expires. What would the options be to keep her here until we learn about the irish citizenship?

 

 

You can apply for a further period of Flr which will give you an additional 30months. Cost will be about 1500 (1000 for the application 500 for NHS surcharge - albeit NHS surcharge will double this year). Your child is British so the extra earnings are not required. 

Many years ago (15+) or something like that, ILR applications were free. Can you believe that? We have Theresa May's Home Office years and EU triggered kneejerk to thank for that change of direction.

10 hours ago, NilSS said:

Many years ago (15+) or something like that, ILR applications were free. Can you believe that? We have Theresa May's Home Office years and EU triggered kneejerk to thank for that change of direction.

Indeed, when my wife came to the UK in 2001, the spouse visa was 260 pounds, the ILR  was free and citizenship was 250 pounds and no tests, governments way of slowing down the amount of people wanting to come here.

We have Theresa May's Home Office years and EU triggered kneejerk to thank for that change of direction.

Don’t really want to get into a political discussion, but the hikes in fees preceded Ms May’s time in office by a considerable period.

That is not true. She didn't start the charging but the overall cost of application went up by orders of magnitude with her in Home Office. She also implemented the minimum income system, forcing families apart. 

This has been dealt with on other threads but the idea of the minimum income system was to stop the tax payer contributing to 'lifestyle choices' of British citizens wishing to settle their families in the UK.

Families earning below this figure are entitled to income related benefits. 

In theory I have no objection to that as a UK tax payer but and it is a big but, there is no flexibility to the system and that discriminates against those with lower income but few outgoings.

My personal feeling on the above is that nearly all taxation is fraudulent and the benefits system encourages a culture of dependency. About the issue of discrimination, which I think we are in agreement on, is that marrying the person you love should never be written off as a lifestyle choice and any spouse of a British citizen should NOT be paying thousands of pounds in fees while their Polish neighbours (with no UK connections) bring their entire family to Britain free of charge with no hurdles to jump. The whole system is screwed up.

To become an Irish citizen i believe you wife will have to have lived in ireland for a few years, it used to be 3, but may be longer.