Uk - Ilr For Thai Wife

[eddibabyyeah]

Hi,

I am a UK resident. My wife is Thai. We have a ten month old son born here in the UK. We both live here in the UK. My wife came here on a 6 month holiday visa a couple of years ago. Returned to Thailand and came here on a 2yr residency Visa about 16 months ago. I did all of the paperwork myself and provided plenty of evidence to backup the application.

As time is moving on and I dont want to leave things til the last minute, I've started to look into what we need to do next. From what I understand she will need to obtain an ILR at the cost of about 820 pounds. Anyone got any pointers around what I need to do to obtain this? Is it a similar process to the residency Visa (ie lots of evidence)? One of the things I noticed for the ILR is that she will need to either pass the stupid "Life in the UK" test or obtain a ESOL certificate from a local college if her English isnt upto the standard required for the "Life in the UK" test. Her spoken English is pretty good, but her written English leaves a lot to be desired, so I think she will need to go the ESOL route. Am I correct in this? I also understand that if she fails the ESOL route she would need to obtain a new 2yr residency visa. Is this true?

Thanks,

Paul

[7by7]

She can apply for ILR after she has been living in the UK for 24 months, provided her current visa is still valid. If not she will need to apply for an extension, known as further leave to remain (details of this below).

One of the requirements is that she demonstrates she has sufficient knowledge of life and language in the UK (KOL) and, as you say, there are two ways of doing this; taking the test or progressing one level on an ESOL with citizenship course.

See Completing application form SET(M and the links on the right hand side of that page for how to apply for ILR.

See Demonstrating your knowledge of language and life in the UK for details of the KOL requirement.

If she has not satisfied KOL before her current visa expires, then she will have to apply for FLR, which lasts for 24 months. See Completing application form FLR(M). Once she has satisfied KOL she can then apply for ILR without having to wait until her FLR expires.

[eddibabyyeah]

She can apply for ILR after she has been living in the UK for 24 months, provided her current visa is still valid. If not she will need to apply for an extension, known as further leave to remain (details of this below).

One of the requirements is that she demonstrates she has sufficient knowledge of life and language in the UK (KOL) and, as you say, there are two ways of doing this; taking the test or progressing one level on an ESOL with citizenship course.

See Completing application form SET(M and the links on the right hand side of that page for how to apply for ILR.

See Demonstrating your knowledge of language and life in the UK for details of the KOL requirement.

If she has not satisfied KOL before her current visa expires, then she will have to apply for FLR, which lasts for 24 months. See Completing application form FLR(M). Once she has satisfied KOL she can then apply for ILR without having to wait until her FLR expires.

Just what I needed. Thanks.

[jasonr3255]

She can apply for ILR after she has been living in the UK for 24 months, provided her current visa is still valid. If not she will need to apply for an extension, known as further leave to remain (details of this below).

One of the requirements is that she demonstrates she has sufficient knowledge of life and language in the UK (KOL) and, as you say, there are two ways of doing this; taking the test or progressing one level on an ESOL with citizenship course.

See Completing application form SET(M and the links on the right hand side of that page for how to apply for ILR.

See Demonstrating your knowledge of language and life in the UK for details of the KOL requirement.

If she has not satisfied KOL before her current visa expires, then she will have to apply for FLR, which lasts for 24 months. See Completing application form FLR(M). Once she has satisfied KOL she can then apply for ILR without having to wait until her FLR expires.

Just what I needed. Thanks.

"Life in the UK test is pretty straight foward" buy the book and let her learn everything in it. It would also be helpful if you went through the book and translated every word into Thai and she wrote the Thai translation above the English, it greatly helped my wife and also widened her vocab. took 3 months study everyday to learn it, where she bacame comfortable in answering all of the 24 questions with a 85-90% strike rate. At first glance of the book you will probably think that it is impossible task, after all, explaining to your wife what a peer is and a quango is going to be funny, hence the importance of translating each word, dont panic just stick with it. Good Luck

Edited June 15, 2010 by 7by7
Reply taken out of quote box.