Thai wife got visitor visa

[MicroB]

My Thai wife got a visitor visa first time of trying. Nothing remarkable in that.

 

She has a prison record, serving 4 weeks in Malaysia in 2019 for working with no permit; she had no money to pay the fine, so it was 4 weeks plus the 6 weeks on remand.

She has had 3 different names

She got as far as Passport control in Korea, after immigration couldn't understant why her passport name was completely different from her ID card (divorced, changed to maiden name, changed first name for luck)

 

One agency, with a UK office, suggested we lie on the application, because she had far too difficult an immigration history.  I gave them short shrift. Appalling advice.

 

We did use an agent, who seemed pretty doubtful given her history.

 

I submitted documents, including English translation of marriage certificate, Mortgage statement, 1 months bank statement, P60 and invitation letter. I didn't go into detail about how much I give my wife, because basically, its none of their business. Just a broad statement that I support her. No submission of emails, messenger transcripts etc, again, none of their business. The agent tried to get me to use a letter from one of his clients as a template. It was a nonsense; the guy had gone into all sorts of detail about all the visits he had done, how he met her family, and performed duties. What his business was about and his position in the community. It ran to 3 sides of A4. I threw that out, and just kept it to the necessary; she is my wife, and she will be visiting me, staying at these addresses for these purposes. I have the means to pay her costs in the UK. Any further questions, you know where to find me. half page of A4.

 

She did her bit; she has a massage shop, got it properly registered as a business, unlike 90% of them, with the public health inspection and sticker of approval. She doesn't have invoices from suppliers; she gets her supplies from the market, Tescos and some shop on Facebook that does massage shop gear. She actually lives in the shop she rents. She has a couple of motorbikes on tic, one of which she rents back to a motorbike rental place to rent out to foreigners. She has a 10 year old Fiesta, that she's paying back, on an informal basis to a friend. She put 100,000 into her bank, and showed the deposits from her shop (admittedly not a lot) and from me (and I just send her Moneygram cash pickups). Her parents are dead, her daughter is in her 20s, she doesn't own a house or land.

 

She sent through all the details on Malaysia, including her old passport showing the blacklisting stamps.

 

In return, she got her 6 month, multi entry visa, and she is over the moon.

 

So I must assume the straightforward applications who get turned down, must have made some howling error on the application, rather than anything being "wrong" about their circumstances. Or they wrote reams and reams, and, like selecting CVs, no one has time to read them.

 

In the end, super easy, barely an inconvenience.

[saakura]

Happy holiday in UK for both of you!

[GypsyT]

Great! Thanks for telling. Others may get courage to try same.

[it is what it is]

 

all my thai friends who want to travel to the uk, or europe, have obtained visas with absolutely no problems. my thai friends who have, or are, studying at uk universities have obtained uk visas with no problems. it's really not difficult.

[rct99q]

Out of the whole post all I got really was you have an over 40 thai wife who does "massage" and got knicked providing similar services in Malaysia.

[MicroB]

10 minutes ago, rct99q said:

Out of the whole post all I got really was you have an over 40 thai wife who does "massage" and got knicked providing similar services in Malaysia.

 

And what I got from your contribution was another account to block. Thanks.

[AustinRacing]

Just make sure she doesn’t wander around offering massages in the UK while you’re at work. Check her social media accounts. Maybe she’s already booked a few clients. 

[Will B Good]

11 hours ago, MicroB said:

One agency, with a UK office, suggested we lie on the application,

 

That is a real no-no.

 

Tried it once about 30 years ago......never again.

[2baht]

12 hours ago, MicroB said:

She has a prison record, serving 4 weeks in Malaysia in 2019 for working with no permit; she had no money to pay the fine, so it was 4 weeks plus the 6 weeks on remand.

She has had 3 different names

She's a keeper, is Noi Lek , Damnit........Joi!

[Homburg]

13 hours ago, MicroB said:

 

In the end, super easy, barely an inconvenience.

Well done, and many thanks for the detailed post with so much good information in there.  Enjoy your time in the UK.

[ignore it]

Granted it none of my business, but how long have you been married, where did you meet, all the romance details etc.

[sampson]

The rejection rates are posted and they are very low for Thai's, it's about 5%.  Some African countries are closer to 50%.

There are various Visa groups for Thai's coming to the UK where rejection letters are posted and the applications must have been appalling judging by the content of those letters.  

 

 

[hotandsticky]

6 hours ago, MicroB said:

 

And what I got from your contribution was another account to block. Thanks.

 

 

You blocked him for telling the truth.

 

 

 

Harsh............and insecure.

[Scouse123]

I've done visas for five Thai nationals in 30 years, all of them went through.

 

I took two to study and paid their college, in three months they were fluent in English speaking.

 

My lady who must be obeyed has a 10-year UK visa, but we never abuse the system.

 

I think the maximum we ever stayed in the UK was six weeks, visiting my UK sons and family

[crazykopite]

The Labour Party are now in government they let anyone in even the illegal boat people which 500 of them arrived in the past few days so it’s a free for all with them 

[RichardColeman]

My wife wants to visit the UK with me, I do not really expect too many issues with the visitor visa - I am a UK citizen, we have been married 10 years, her passport and id cards are all in my surname, and my Thai bank account links to hers with transfers each month for our living expenses. I own my UK home and can show a nice income each month. My wife owns large land farms in Nan. She has travelled abroad and always returned without issue. 

 

My only hiccup would be works issues if they bring them up. My wife is a stay at home mom with our child who would not be travelling with us at this stage. This said, if she had any issues about returning due to work, the UK would have to ban all thai pensioners !

[MicroB]

41 minutes ago, crazykopite said:

The Labour Party are now in government they let anyone in even the illegal boat people which 500 of them arrived in the past few days so it’s a free for all with them 

 

My wife is not a refugee. She is coming for a holiday. I don't understand your illogical linkage of refugee policy with tourism, unless you have a medical condition, more of which later. If your response is driven by a medical condition, you have my sympathy. On this forum, I see frequent reports of criminals, including sex offenders, openly living in the expatriate community, with members of this forum openly admitting they had befriended them, including sex offenders.

 

I take great offence at your crude attempts to insult, as I have done with others, who's accounts I have blocked because I couldn't be bothered to indulge their trollbaiting fantasies that make up for weak characters. But I will bite with you, and see how your version of a troll goes. I can always hit that Ignore button that the owners of this site have implemented for good reason. Maybe they will make that a two way ignore like other social media sites; I can't see your posts, and you can't see mine.

 

The Home Office manual written by the previous regime gives instructions to IOs. It has not been revised, despite your implied allegation that they have changed it in a matter of a few days. For visitor visas, all applications where there is a custodial sentence of 12 months or less  completed less than 12 months before the application, must be denied.  For Partner visas, the same manual indicates all applications where there was a 12 month sentence completed less than 5 years  before application, must be denied. There is a sliding scale for other offences up to 4 years sentence, after which there is no prospect of being granted a visa.

 

You also have to consider that apparently on July 5th, there was about 1500 prison places left, and that since October, the previous government had granted early release to convicts, on an ad hoc basis (ie. without any real regard for the nature of their crimes, except in the case of the most violent and heinous), in order to free up spaces.

 

As a kid (army brat) in Hong Kong in 74-77, I remember another group labeled at the time as "illegal boat people"; those fleeing former South Vietnam.  This wasn't just for a few months as members of the South Vietnam government and ARVN members fled, it went on for 25 years. 100,000 arrived in Hong Kong, in various ramshackle vessals, by 1980, and they were incarcerated in camps behind barbed wire. But they still continued to flow. In the end, the issue was fixed by granting some refugee status in various countries, but ultimately about 50% were returned, largely through the major powers securing an agreement from the Vietnamese government that there would not be retribution against the returnees; in other words, the root causes were tackled (in this case, fear of the Hanoi government taking punitive action against members and supporters of the old regime).

 

One of the reasons successive UK governments have gotten into a pickle is a 2010 interview between Andrew Marr and David Cameron, following the Archbishop of Canterbury's call for immigration to be cut. In the interview, Cameron let slip the term "net migration" and a target of cutting that from 100's of thousands to 10s of thousands. In one slip, the immigration debate shifted to a position that all future governments would be doomed to fail on.

 

Its doomed to failure as the government has no control of emigration, short of imposing Russian style restrictions of not issuing passports (the original reason modern passports were introduced was as a mechanism to stop selected people from leaving the country during WW1, for instance Britain needed to stop engineers from leaving the UK, and weaken Britain's capabilities, or worse, pass such capabilities to the enemy. Germany thought much the same and so forth. Today, passports are seen as a way to facilitate entry not exit, and are generally seen as an expensive right).

 

Short of fixing the issues that drive people to board leaking boats for a 25-30 mile cross, the only solution to "illegal boat people" would be the complete militarisation of the British coastline; maybe not a wall on the beaches, but laying millions of miles of barbed wire, and various offshore traps, of the sort last seen in 1940, combined with active patrols on our beaches. That seems grim to me, but its what the Nat-Cs and others seem to want. In some ways, the scenes portrayed in the dystopian film "The Children of Men" (based on PD James' excellent novel of the same name, describing a world in the grip of a global pandemic that has resulted in mass incurable infertility) represent their fantasy. Not such a fantasy; the British administered refugee camps in Hong Kong became so overcrowded, they had a cholera outbreak during the 1980s. Some of the first camps used were abandoned Japanese POW camps, which themselves were repurposed pre-WW2 refugee camps.

 

 

In the meantime, why did you conflate a tourist with a refugee? Or are you proposing that the UK imposes a ban on tourists entering the UK. Trying to understand your deliberately provocative response to a fairly ordinary post.

 

Is it how you brain is wired, that you feel the need to react like this, and that you can't help it? That you, and some others who have posted on this thread,  feel the need to upset anonymous strangers. I know some people on the Autistic spectrum have this lack of control, and if you have had a diagnosis, I feel pity for you, as it must be difficult to get through life and establish normal relationships. If on the other hand, you obtain some sort of sexual thrill from such postings, you have my scorn.

[ibjoe]

Had to read through the posts a bit to figure out that Thai wife got visitor visa to UK.. (could have been to another country e.g. AU, US, NZ, etc., or maybe even Thailand, heading wasn't clear). Thank you for your report.

[Letseng]

On 7/12/2024 at 7:20 PM, MicroB said:

My Thai wife got a visitor visa first time of trying. Nothing remarkable in that.

 

She has a prison record, serving 4 weeks in Malaysia in 2019 for working with no permit; she had no money to pay the fine, so it was 4 weeks plus the 6 weeks on remand.

She has had 3 different names

She got as far as Passport control in Korea, after immigration couldn't understant why her passport name was completely different from her ID card (divorced, changed to maiden name, changed first name for luck)

 

One agency, with a UK office, suggested we lie on the application, because she had far too difficult an immigration history.  I gave them short shrift. Appalling advice.

 

We did use an agent, who seemed pretty doubtful given her history.

 

I submitted documents, including English translation of marriage certificate, Mortgage statement, 1 months bank statement, P60 and invitation letter. I didn't go into detail about how much I give my wife, because basically, its none of their business. Just a broad statement that I support her. No submission of emails, messenger transcripts etc, again, none of their business. The agent tried to get me to use a letter from one of his clients as a template. It was a nonsense; the guy had gone into all sorts of detail about all the visits he had done, how he met her family, and performed duties. What his business was about and his position in the community. It ran to 3 sides of A4. I threw that out, and just kept it to the necessary; she is my wife, and she will be visiting me, staying at these addresses for these purposes. I have the means to pay her costs in the UK. Any further questions, you know where to find me. half page of A4.

 

She did her bit; she has a massage shop, got it properly registered as a business, unlike 90% of them, with the public health inspection and sticker of approval. She doesn't have invoices from suppliers; she gets her supplies from the market, Tescos and some shop on Facebook that does massage shop gear. She actually lives in the shop she rents. She has a couple of motorbikes on tic, one of which she rents back to a motorbike rental place to rent out to foreigners. She has a 10 year old Fiesta, that she's paying back, on an informal basis to a friend. She put 100,000 into her bank, and showed the deposits from her shop (admittedly not a lot) and from me (and I just send her Moneygram cash pickups). Her parents are dead, her daughter is in her 20s, she doesn't own a house or land.

 

She sent through all the details on Malaysia, including her old passport showing the blacklisting stamps.

 

In return, she got her 6 month, multi entry visa, and she is over the moon.

 

So I must assume the straightforward applications who get turned down, must have made some howling error on the application, rather than anything being "wrong" about their circumstances. Or they wrote reams and reams, and, like selecting CVs, no one has time to read them.

 

In the end, super easy, barely an inconvenience.

I've long since learnt not to supply info they do not request. Too much info creates the impression you want to cover up. 

Well done & may yr wife enjoy her holiday.