Settlement Visa Refused.

[lamonster]

Hello all. Hope you all had a great xmas and new year?

I have just returned from Thailand - while I was there my fiancee had her interview at the embassy after almost 6 month wait - and after a thorough grilling they refused the application. Having looked at the reasons behind the refusal I would appreciate any comments.

Basically the ECO was not satisfied my fiancee was coming to the UK to marry as we hadn't a firm date when we were going to tie the not (as I didn't want to start making firm plans until I knew she had the Visa). Nobody mentioned that we needed a letter from the registry office...

They also didn't like all she could tell them about my work was that I "work with computers" - which I think is a bit unfair as nobody in my family could give you a better description and probably most of the people in my organisation wouldn't be able to give you too much more information either

The next point was that the interview was carried out in Thai (which the ECO said that she speaks little english) I can assure you she can talk english well enough - ok she would not be winning any awards for speach making- but we have spoken on the phone almost every day for the last 20 months of knowing each other - and as my Thai is quite limited I can assure you I do not spend 30-50 mins not having a conversation with myself.

All the above I think could be down to the fact that my fiancee was bricking it (I can tell when she is worried about something as she stops talking) I could barely get 5 words out of her the morning before so god knows what she was like in the interview.

Tacked on the end of the refusal is the accomadation/finance query (which I feel was added to give the top end more wieght). We would be living with my Mother until such time we were ready to move on - I supplied a letter from my mothers solicitor that stated that the property had been transferred into my mothers name, and my mother wrote a letter clearly stating that we could live with her - ECO stated that "...you have produced very little evidence to clartify where you both intend to live and how this will be financed" - Any ideas on what else I could have supplied?

The last nail in the coffin as fair as the ECO was concerned was that as of 12th Dec I had less that £1000 in the bank - "...is evidence of [my] financial commitments" i.e. the old recourse to public funds card - There was no consideration of the fact that I am already sending her between 100-200 a month to support her in thailand already along with £200+ in phone bills, that the date on the statement was 12th Dec and I didn't get paid until after I left for thailand so couldn't get upto date figures from internet (I don't trust any of the internet places in BKK with my bank details)

Whats the score with appealing against this? If I can demonstrate

1) Date/Time that we are to be married

2) Get something that demonstrated her level of english

3) Point out that I do have somewhere to live indefinitely

4) That I am already spending £300+ on on supporting and communicating with her (without taking into consideration I made three trips to Thailand last year for total of 10 weeks spent with her - which again must give someone some idea the amount of money I am spending visit her - my argument being that I wouldn't need to spend best part of 7K last year on vacations and therefore have a fair amount of disposable income.

Sorry if any of this is unclear - I just got home from LHR and haven't slept properly for 36 hours!

[the scouser]

Lamonster,

If you believe that the visa officer's decision was unreasonable, you can set out your reasons in a letter and send this to the Entry Clearance Manager asking for the decision to be reviewed. If that fails, you can then approach UK Visas asking them to look at it again.

At face value, the decision does appear to be harsh as it's not possible to arrange a marriage date prior to both parties being in the UK. The best the visa officer can therefore expect is for you and your fiancée to have an idea of the arrangements, rather than hard and fast plans. Furthermore, it is unreasonable to expect your fiancée to have an indepth knowledge of your employment.

You should show that your income is such that you can sustain the various trips to Thailand and support yourself and your fiancée. Did you provide your pay slips/accounts?

With regard to the accommodation, you should make it clear to the visa officer that the property in question is in your mother's name and that you won't have to pay to live there. If your mother owns it outright, then perhaps submit another letter from her solicitor stating this.

In addition to your representations to the ECM/UK Visas, you should make sure that you appeal the refusal. The fact that you've appealed does not preclude you from making the further representations.

The fact that your fiancée was interviewed in Thai is largely irrelevant unless the visa officer made an issue of her lack of English in the refusal notice. Generally speaking, a visa officer will insisit upon an applicant being interviewed in their indigenous tongue in order to avoid any confusion. However, that doesn't take in to account that most of the interpreters at the British embassy speak little better than pidgin English and one must wonder whether the applicant's responses are correctly represented to the visa officer.

Scouse.

[Clive sorts]

Lamonster

Some additional info that I can shed on this is that regarding the marriage date, my now Wife & I had this obstacle put in front of us by the ECO last year.

My Wife had a short first interview ( Settlement V ) and the ECO also asked her for the date that we intended to marry ?? As you also mentioned, we wanted to be successful with the visa first before any " booking " was made with a Registry office, so at the interview she said we haven't a date booked. The ECO said to come back on another date for a 2nd interview ( approx. 8 weeks later ) and to make sure we had a date booked. In the meantime I spoke to our local Registry office about booking the marriage but they were unable to do this as both parties have to attend the initial interview at the Registry office in the UK to make the booking.

So, I wrote a letter to give to my Wife for the interview 8 weeks later, stating on it that we were unable to " book " the marriage however I stated in the letter our " date of intention to marry " for which they still queired but eventually accepted.

My advice is ditto Scouses, write in to appeal the refusal with as much info that you can muster.

Best of luck

Regards

Clive sorts

[lamonster]

Scouse,

I have Form AIT-2: I was going to fill this in and get it back to the Address on the form before the 28 days was up (I am also going to get a solicitor - hopefully an aquaitance of mine - to write things in such a way that they know I mean business, I was also told by a friend of mine to go see my MP to get them to look at it to and get them to give me a letter/backing). Do I still need to write the Visa Officer at BKK a letter outlining my case?

My fiancee said the ECO never asked anything about where I live, my family etc (she talks to my mum a couple of times a month to). I could send you the exact wording of the refusal if you think it would help - as I haven't included everything as I feel that the ECO was very selective in what they used to make the decision e.g. when asked about how we spend our time the only phrase included in the refusal is "apply for visa" - which my Fiancee clearly remember telling them about going out to restaraunts, going to the cinema, visiting her family etc and think the visa comment was taken totally out of context - would be interested to see how well this conversation was translated!

As to the language thing and I quote: "This interview was conducted in Thai because you speak very little english and at the same time you told me that your boyfriend's thai is limited...I therefore do not find it credible that this is a subsisting relationship based upon daily phone conversations"

No mention of the 5 trips to thailand to amounting to total of 11 weeks in last 20 months, the trip to visit her parents and family in Ubon (I included photos of me with her mother, father, sister, niece and brother).

Finances - I included payslips for last 12 months (6 months prior to application in Aug and 6 months leading up to interview in Dec), I included last 12 months bank statements, and I included Western Union transfer information for last 6 months amounting to well over £1100 transferred to her, i.e. at least £100 per month.

Clive Sorts,

After I read the refusal I got my sister to contact the local registry office and they said that they would supply with a letter granting me a provisional booking. My Fiancee only had one interview. If they had taken the time to come outside the embassy and ask me I could have cleared all their concerns up.

On another note - what's the score with representation during the interview - are they allowed a legal representative or some such? As you can appreciate the whole exprerience has put her off re-applying should the appeal fall on deaf ears - specially when they started asking if she had any other farang aquaitances etc (basically accusing her of being up to no good I think)

Do they record these interviews in any form just in case things did get nasty down the line.

What sort of thing should I be sending to the Visa Officer - much the same as I have writtern here - of course using correct layout and presentation of the arguments?

Edited January 3, 2006 by lamonster

[the scouser]

Send off the appeal form. At least that way the appeal is "booked" and if all else fails you have it to fall back upon.

You then decide what you are going to do in the interim. You can either wait until the next interview date, making sure that you fully prepare or, if you feel that the decision to refuse your fiancée was flawed, then you can make written representations to the ECM/UK Visas now, attempting to convince them to overturn the decision to refuse the visa.

If you are going to use the services of a solicitor, then make sure he is au fait with immigration law. Alternatively, your MP can be of assistance but might decline to get involved until all legal avenues are exhausted.

If you want me to cast my eye over the refusal, then by all means send me a PM and I'll get in touch.

Scouse.

[lamonster]

Scouse -

I have sent you the complete text of the refusal.

I will certainly make sure that any lawyer I hand money over to is more than qualified in the immigration area. I will start drafting a letter to the Visa people and get the forms back to the relevant dept to.

Thanks for your assistance.

[Jersey_UK]

I am obviously looking at this thread for selfish reasons - but this seems pretty much the same position (if not in some respects a bit more) we would be in apart from having got married beforehand

Anyway, Scouse, a couple of things that occur to me from your comments.

When my Missus (to be) is nervous she talks a lot and her grasp of English is pretty fair - certainly above "Pidgin". I dunno if you know what the position is if the Interpreter says something in English to the ECO which the Missus disagrees with - is it a given that the ECO MUST only rely on what the Official Translater says "because" the interview was conducted in Thai or can a degree of common sense come into this?

The Job description thing could be a bit interesting, I used to have trouble explaining to myself what I did - nowadays it is somewhat easier, but as the Missus (god bless her ) has a mouth like the Mersey Tunnel and given her social circle I am not too keen on her wandering around saying that I "Look for money Mafia" - or some other over simplification. "David work Bank" is what she knows, although in itself is not always true, it would be more something like whatever "Financial Institutions" gives me a contract - do you think I should just add something in my Sponsorship letter to this effect? It's not a matter of a lack of Trust in the Missus, more that it is just not important, coupled with a paranoia of someone getting the wrong end of the stick. In practice I do little more than cast another pair of eyes over things with the benefit of hindsight and then shuffling paper - rather than anything actually "interesting".

Sorry for hijacking this thread, just that sometimes questions just appear!

I was going to say that I may not be checking back on this website for a little while as I am off to start the trek to Thailand..........but looking out of the window I can see FOG

So I may be still here

[lamonster]

I think the whole job description thing was just used as window dressing, thats purely my biased two cents worth of course!

I am definitely going to get a letter from the registry office here with a provisional booking on it for say 5 months time.

[Jersey_UK]

I think the whole job description thing was just used as window dressing, thats purely my biased two cents worth of course!

I am definitely going to get a letter from the registry office here with a provisional booking on it for say 5 months time.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Good Luck anyway!

[lamonster]

Cheers Jersey!!

10 months from when we decided to go for the Visa - looks like this one is going to be a long hard slog, but you learns from your mistakes and keep on going I guess.

Embassy 1 - Lamonster 0...this one is going into extra time...

[the scouser]

Jersey,

Unless any objections are raised, the ECO will rely upon what the interpreter says. If an applicant believes that something has been misinterpreted, then she should ask for the interview record to be noted accordingly. If it is apparent that the interpreter is just useless, then the applicant is within their rights to make this known at the time of the interview and request another interview with a different interpreter.

Of course, such an occurrence would result in a huge loss of face for the Thai interpreter who, after all, would think him/herself as being a cut-above because they work at the embassy. Perish the thought that some outcaste applicant would deign to question their evident superiority, but the interview record constitutes a legal document and should be an actual and contemporaneous account. Consequently, their face-loss is irrelevant.

I do sometimes wonder how accurate the interpreting is at the embassy in Bangkok. Most applicants don't have the English prowess to question what the interpreters report them as having said and it is possible that the interpreters, when they don't know the English, make things up rather than be seen to be an idiot in front of the visa officer. This could be crucial to the visa being issued or refused.

Anyway, I digress. In your sponsorship letter, you should detail your employment as accurately as possible but perhaps state that, evidently, whilst your girlfriend has a good knowledge of you and your circumstances, the minutiae of your job is more than she needs to know.

Cheers,

Scouse.

[watson]

All my dealings with the UK embassy in BKK to date have been consistently fair. This has resulted in my g/f of two years now being with me in London following a recently successful settlement visa application.

Having said that, I find it both incredible and absurd that the fact your g/f cannot give an adequate description of what you do for a living and cannot speak good enough english so as to doubt you have a genuine relationship with you.

As I'm sure is the case for many users of this forum (hello Jersey), it's almost impossible for most Thai's to understand what some of us westerners do job-wise. FYI, my g/f had and has no real idea of what I do for a living, except it involves "communication and mobile phones and music, something like that" and this was more or less what she told the embassy. She may also be the only example of an applicant using the words "Iggy" and "Pop" when asked what kind of music her boyfriend liked. Anyway, I explained my occupation in the invitation letter which presumably was clear to the ECO.

However, I'm sure that our particular case was significantly strengthend by the fact that she had previously visited the UK on a visitors visa two times previous. Have you considered going down this route, ie. apply for a visitors visa rather than a settlement one - initially at least?

[lamonster]

Watson,

Your not the first person to mention the vacation visa - but I couldn't think of any reason for her to go back to Thailand - i.e. No business interests, a "proper job", land, money in the bank - whatever, so I thought this was a non-starter as 5 mins in the ECO would have slapped it with the old Insuffieint reason to return gambit. Now we have applied for a fiancee visa - she is fubared as they will say the same as "couple of months ago you were moving to UK, I don't believe you will return to Thailand" response.

This is why we waited until we were ready to go the whole 9 yards a get married. I was then told that perhaps it would be a good idea if we got married in Thailand first - but I wanted my family and friends to be present for the ceremony in UK. Her family are more than happy to have the budhist ceremony at a later date with big party etc back at her families home - that was the rationale behind it anyway.

As far as my gf english is concerned it really isn't that bad but she said it was 50/50 and that she would like to get some proper schooling in English when she gets to UK (which she said the ECO didn't look to happy about) - which I suggested as she needs to learn proper grammar and vocab needs a bit of work - i.e. she bought me a scarf for Xmas - but she said it was "something to go on my neck for stop the cold" which is a long winded way of saying it but I am sure you would get what she means.

Scouse has advised me to get hold of the transcipts from the interview - my GF mentioned today on the phone that when he asked her where I live she gave the name of the Town, then he asked her where this was - like she was supposed to know that - if she had given him OS grid reference then I am sure this may have sufficed - sorry getting ratty as haven't got over the fligh back to London this morning yet.

[Rj 81]

Sorry to hear about your G/f's refusal. I hope I don't end up in the same situation in a few months time, as my G/f was refused a visit visa in Oct 05, we have now decided to get married and therefore apply for a settlement visa in the next few months.

It annoys me when the Embassy use petty reasons, which they know just need a little more explaining to clarify there concern, instead of just using common sense. Also when they misinterperit what they have been told, seems deliberate in some instances.

I think they pick on the weaker applicants, I think they can spot an "easy refusal" coming a mile off. I know they have got to stop trafficking and non genuine applicants, but it is ridiculas sometimes. I think they can't grant every application a visa, so they have to refuse a certain number regardless.

[expatinasia]

The officer could be looking more at you, than your GF. Here you are, ready to get married, and what do you have to offer: you and she are going to live with your mother, you have very limited financial resources, and no real plans to get married.

[lamonster]

The officer could be looking more at you, than your GF.  Here you are, ready to get married, and what do you have to offer: you and she are going to live with your mother, you have very limited financial resources, and no real plans to get married.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OWCH

Well the fact I live with my mother is purely down to the fact that she has a three bed house that she lives in alone and I help her pay some of her bills. And to buy my own place at the current time is just daft when I am paying out so much going to Thailand 3 times a year - I already have plans in the pipeline to buy somewhere of my own but that is neither here nor there.

We have plans to get married - registry office do in local town - but I couldn't book anything or plan anything as I didn't know when she would actually be here - i.e. she applied back in August - so I though 3 months and get interview so possibly be in UK for late November...so originally we were thinking Jan/Feb to get married - but then Interview wasn't until Late Dec - and she didn't get the visa so no way those plans are going to work out.

Financially - well I am earning over 40K a year at the moment and would have earned 45K++ this year if I hadn't spent best part of 2.5 months in Thailand - so I am not financially that poorly off - it's more a case of the money I do get is used for going to Thailand (last year three trips around £7.5K min), chatting to my gf everyday/SMS (last year £1800), sending her money every month another couple grand - so I have spent 11-12K last year which is more than a lot of people actually earned! Now I think of it like that I need to go sit down

[Buff-horns]

they think you dont have enough cash in bank, they want to see 10s of 1000s ,steady job ,and your own house or flat .

flitting back and forth indicates to them unsteady job background .

we dont know where you met so they might be stonewalling on account of that detail.

they can cook up all sorts of stuff if they dont like the look of things.

[Buff-horns]

there is now monthly quotas so maybe you became the too many of the month application.

i dont know what the quotas are.

one of my neighbours is married and he has trouble too.

[GU22]

they think you dont have enough cash in bank, they want to see 10s of 1000s ,steady job ,and your own house or flat .

&lt;deleted&gt;.

When my wife applied I only supplied 6 months of payslips which showed an average net monthly income of under £1000. I had no savings to speak of, and my current account dipped into the red shortly before payday each month. I was living with my parents at the time, and my wife joined me there. I satisfied the financial requirement because I showed that although I wasn't well off, I could support and accommodate her without recourse to public funds.

there is now monthly quotas so maybe you became the too many of the month application.

i dont know what the quotas are.

More &lt;deleted&gt;. The UK do not operate a quota system on visa applications.

Unless you can provide an official link that says they do!?

Edited January 4, 2006 by GU22

[lamonster]

they think you dont have enough cash in bank, they want to see 10s of 1000s ,steady job ,and your own house or flat .

I have never seen or heard of anything requiring large sums in the bank being required to get a visa for the UK for marriage purposes (most figures I have seen say you have to have 50-60 a week after you have paid out everything to take care of your partner) - I have seen many members of this forum being successful and are in the same boat as me, and if this was the case then it amounts to discrimination as only those who are rich enough would be able to get married to someone outside of the EU, irony is if I go work in France or Netherlands or whatever - I can get a family permit (once we got married that is)

we dont know where you met so they might be stonewalling on account of that detail.

they can cook up all sorts of stuff if they dont like the look of things.

They can stonewall all they want regarding where I met my gf - even if she was a call girl or escort (she wasn't/isn't by the way) then as far as I know there is nothing in UK law (different if you are in the States so I hear) that allows an ECO to deny an application based on moral grounds in any case - they might no like a persons background - I realise that this might give them the excuse to start looking for a reason to deny the application but if the applicant takes it to appeal once someone outside of BKK looks at the case I bet it would get overturned.

I agree that if there are quotas in place, and I wouldn't be surprised if the ECOs had targets to keep to whether official or unofficial, that we may have been caught as she was interviewed near the end of the month.

flitting back and forth indicates to them unsteady job background .

Having three holidays a year is bad news and demonstrates a poor work history? - I have been working for the same company for the last two years

[the scouser]

one of my neighbours is married and he has trouble too.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hardly surprising if he's been taking your advice.

Scouse.

[jvc600]

Hi lamonster.

sorry to here about your good lady.

my wife has just been refused settlement ,hence you can read my post for help if you wish .

all i can say to you is that you are not alone mate.

one point that i have learned now the hard way is that you must go into to that much detail with every thing for her application. your bank statements if you are sending money out to her and it shows on your statements high light it and evey thing else . show them where all the money goes .

your mothers house get a letter of invitation written out by your mother and get her to sign it and date it. get a photo copy of her passport photo to back up that it is her. get a letter from your employer saying you are in a full time permanent job. take photos of your mothers home. get your girlfriend to keep the print offs if she takes money from the atm machine as this will show how much and when and will tie in to what you send her. you have basically got to treat the embassy visa eco s as people who do not believe any thing you or your girlfriend says until you prove it on paper .this is just the way they work. i and my wife are finding this out right now the hard way. but to be fair to the ecos who see 1000 of applicants week after week thats all they can go on. simple hard evidence and nothing more. put a new application together in a way that you would show every thing and more without any reasons to doubt. put it this way thats what i am on with right now.

[lamonster]

jvc600

Yes I thought I had gone into a lot of detail - I gave them 2 lever arch file (the 2/3 size ones) with all the documents in - I highlighted the phone and mobile bills. I gave them the letter that my mothers solicitor sent my mother when she bought the house - the one with the land registry stuff attached to say it was transferred into her name etc, along with this I gave them a letter from my mother stating that it is no problem for me and my mrs to stay in the house no problems.

As far as the money I sent her was concerned I gave them the letters my bank sends me when I do a transfer, the letters that Western Union send you or the emails they send out when you do it online. The ECO said he believed I was employed and had a steady job - I even did a break down of my outgoings on average per month - admitidly I didnt highlight these on my bank statements as I didnt want to make them into rainbows...

You know what the funny thing is? My mrs said that the people in the embassy were moaning about how much stuff I had given them - this wasn't an official moan just the admin people making a comment when she went to hand in the first file and pay for the visa application.

I will give the appeal/letter writting to visa people/visit my MP a go - this will take another 3 months plus to try - hopefully this will give my Mrs the chance to calm down a bit as at the present time she really don't want to talk to another ECO as long as she lives!

If I do have to reapply - then I will get myself married out in LOS first - and if they thought the amount of stuff I gave them the first time was a lot - then I will get an accountant friend of mine to help me do a financial analysis pointing out where money goes and how much of it is already being used to support/talk to/visit her...it will be a beautiful thing that could bring a tear to the eye of an inland revenue inspector

I can see what you mean though - if there is something that could tip the application in your favour and it is not mentioned by your girlfriend - then they can play dumb and not see it I suppose.

It's a bit of a mickey take though - there's probably less paperwork involved in getting weapons grade uranium

[Templer]

I was one of the lucky ones, we got our engagement visa 1st time.

Before we applied I met this guy from Liverpool and he gave me a few tips

Put the application in to a presentation folder,

Start with a letter of introduction, what you do work wise, how you met,

how long you have know each other, etc

I also said although we have know each other for 18 months,

we want to get to know each other better, by living together,

also to make sure my now wife, wanted to stay in England,

before we made the commitment.

On the money side I was always up to my overdraft, which they did have some concerns over,

I tried to give out more info than they wanted,

Make sure that you have all the phone bill and emails over the course of the relationship

Also Index the info, this helps them,

It shows that you are serious about the relationship

I was able to go with my wife when she was interviewed,

so could answer any questions that they wanted to know.

I did get abit annoyed with the interpreter as she was not always asking the same questions

put to my wife, by the officer.

May be I was just lucky,

with regards to the money side ,there was this guy shouting and hollering because he had been refused .

He told me that he was a multi millionaire, so it's not always about the money side.

Good luck anyway

Templer

[lamonster]

Templer,

I did all of what you said - it was all neatly filed in a lever arch file in plastic pockets. There was an overview of what was in each section in the front and at the start of any section that needed explanation I put further details - e.g. for the telephone calls I mainly use an 0845 number - which appears on my phone bill - so I put a screen shot of the website that has the numbers on etc.

I wrote a letter outlining what the application was all about, the times I had visited her and how long I had stayed with her. I described the property my mother owns, the number of rooms etc.

If you have been on this forum a while there was a post which was several pages long with the advice in what to include in the folder to the embassy - I did the lot.

To be honest I think it was less about what I had provided but more a case of my girlfriends nerves getting the better of her. Specially as we had an appointment at 10:30am and she was sent away at 12PM to come back at 1PM as there were so many people there.

And like you said the interpretters don't seem to be much cop from what I am hearing from various people.

Does anyone know what the score is with them having representation with them during the interview i.e. a lawyer? They wouldn't even let me in the embassy. The eco must have known I was in Thailand as he had my passport - so if he wanted answers to some of his queries - then all he had to do was come and get me. Fat chance of that though

[the scouser]

There's no God-given right to representation during the interview, but even if there were, any representative can't interrupt the interview and is only there as an observer. I, too, have my doubts about the abilities of some of the interpreters. Professional interpreters will interpret exactly what the interviewee says, and to be fully proficient the interpreter must be fluent in both languages. I have yet to encounter a Thai member of the UK embassy staff that I would consider to be fluent in English. I get the distinct impression that some of the interpreters, because of their linguistic deficiencies, either only convey half of what the applicant says or, at worst, totally misrepresents him/her. That, coupled with their belief that they are of a higher social standing than the interviewee, can be sufficient for the visa officer to refuse an application when it might have otherwise been granted.

Scouse.

[lamonster]

There's no God-given right to representation during the interview, but even if there were, any representative can't interrupt the interview and is only there as an observer. I, too, have my doubts about the abilities of some of the interpreters. Professional interpreters will interpret exactly what the interviewee says, and to be fully proficient the interpreter must be fluent in both languages. I have yet to encounter a Thai member of the UK embassy staff that I would consider to be fluent in English. I get the distinct impression that some of the interpreters, because of their linguistic deficiencies, either only convey half of what the applicant says or, at worst, totally misrepresents him/her. That, coupled with their belief that they are of a higher social standing than the interviewee, can be sufficient for the visa officer to refuse an application when it might have otherwise been granted.

Scouse.

It's almost laughable that for something this important you aren't allowed your lawyer to sit in and make sure that everything is done is above board - and make sure that the ECO doesn't step out of line in their questioning (I have heard of ECOs telling girls their bf is cheating on them as they have seen another application for another girl with him as the sponsor! Talk about cheeky).

Even more astonishing is that the translators are so rubbish - I am surprised something hasn't been done about it although what could be done pratically I am not sure.

I must admit that the more I think about this the more it appears that the interview was the downfall to our application - thus why the reasons for refusal appear so daft. My Mrs isn't high brow hoity toity girl - and she was brought up to respect people in authority and not answer them back or give them attitude, that combined with her bricking it would have made her look very nervous, she even said she understood a lot of what the ECO was saying but not all of it - she never mentioned anything about the translator making up stories though - but I bet the translator was hardly going out of their way to make sure the whole story was told.

I will see - we have asked the BKK Embassy for the notes from the interview - once these are in my hands I can then see exactly what was said - shame they don't tape the interviews (do they?)- that way could get the whole lot translated, the way I see it what is written in the interview notes/report could be a load of old tripe to - as there are no witnesses to confirm one way or the other what was said. I am getting paranoid now

[Rj 81]

Just going back to the point about handing in the documents. My G/f had 2 folders of paperwork, all in see through plastic sheets, all in order. When she handed them over she was told to take everything out, so she had to go to the back of the que and wait again. A bit silly really. I've heard of this happening to others also.

[lamonster]

Just going back to the point about handing in the documents. My G/f had 2 folders of paperwork, all in see through plastic sheets, all in order. When she handed them over she was told to take everything out, so she had to go to the back of the que and wait again. A bit silly really. I've heard of this happening to others also.

Glad they never did this to my gf - would have taken her a month of sundays to do that with our stuff.

Agree it is funny - espcially with things like my birth cert/passport that there wasn't really any way to attach it to a folder. Ok they have a job to do at the embassy - but they do appear to be hit and miss with the way they deal with people.

Then again I have this theory that government dept and large corporates have no common sense (I work for a big corporate on a gov project for the ministry of health) - you spend the first year banging your head against the wall becuase there's no logic or common sense applied to anything...then you just give up and go with the flow...bit off topic that last bit - but from what people have been saying to me and here on the forum - it appears there's no logic or common sense in the Embassy at BKK either.

[silomfan]

I am really sorry to hear about the problems you are having with the British Embassy.

Reading your thread and the replies to it is almost unbelievable and yet from my experience i am not at all surprised. You and others posting have perfectly genuine relationships and yet you are refused. I made the comment on a different thread ages ago that it is just too arbitrary that 2 identical applications can be either approved or refused depending on who is the ECO. There should be a set of rules and the applicant either does or doesn't meet them and the visa should or should not be issued accordingly. This idea of "every case being judged on its merits" leaves it open to abuse either deliberately or not by the ECO's. If you meet the criteria the visa should be a formality.

And all this business about the ability or otherwise of the translators is quite horrific to read and backed up by my own experiences. How can this be allowed to happen in 2006?? All concerned should do as i have done and involved my MP. It can do no harm and might actually , eventually, lead to this lottery of a visa system being made much fairer.

This is one of the more extraordinary posts i have read here recently and should be re-read by everyone. Most will be appalled by the time they have finished.

Meanwhile these Gods (ECO's) will be out in the bars of Bangkok tonight and every night seeing no double standards in what they do and the relationships they wreck during the daytime.

SILOMFAN