The dilemma:

My wife and young baby returned to UK (my wife on a 6 month holiday visa). My wife is to return to Thailand on 21st March BUT - due to a good and unexpected work opportunity I will stay in UK with our baby. Obviously this is now a huge pain for my wife to have to travel back home and apply for spouse visa. As she has held a spouse visa for UK before does anybody know if she can change visa status here in UK? It is a huge inconvenience for her to go home right now and a costly one in nursery fees etc - all of which can be done but I'd rather my baby be at home with the wife than in a nursery five days a week. Assume please that all other things are ok (ie I have a good job, income from property, wife owns vehicles, house & land etc in Thailand). We are getting near to the wire on this one so any help would be great!

Thanking you all in advance.

PS Our baby has both a Thai and UK passport if that means anything. We have been married over three years now and cohabiting in UK / Thailand for the entire time.

Hi Toddy,

The immigration rules say that an applicant seeking to extend their stay based on marriage to a Brit has to have entered the country with a visa, if not for that specific purpose, then certainly not as a visitor. Therefore, I'm afraid that in all likelihood your wife will have to leave the UK in order to get a settlement visa. You could try applying based on compassionate grounds, but it is unlikely that the Home Office would consider inconvenience as constituting a valid reason.

I'll see if I can dig up anything in the Home Office policy, but the site is notoriously slow, so it may not be until tonight.

Scouse.

Toddy,

I've had a look at the Home Office policy and it's bad news, I'm afraid. The policy goes out of its way to reinforce the point that visitors who seek to stay on as spouses will be refused. As I said in my previous post, you could try the compassionate angle, but, to be honest, I don't think they'd construe inconvenience as a valid reason to cave in.

Scouse.

Yeah you are all right - I found out today from Immigration in Croydon. A bit daft really as they will owe me a fortune every month in child tax credits etc - single Dad in full time employment with a kid in care six days a week and they also lose the tax my wife would pay whilst working. But that's the gov. for you!

Anyway it's not the end of the world.

Cheers for the help.