"in-person" Application For Ilr

[mrbojangles]

Just thought i'd let you people know of a mate of mine's experience. And if anyone has had the same or any comments to make.

He's from Manchester and applied for the £500 interview for ILR at Liverpool. His wife and he went, with what he thought was a rock solid binder of evidence (letters etc), that they are living together as man and wife.

After going through the evidence, the IO said that she would have to, note: "refuse the application" (not refuse the ILR) on the grounds that they didn't have any evidence covering the first 4 months of her stay in the UK.

As you can imagine he wasn't too pleased, however the woman stated, quote "if you apply by the postal system, you should be Ok, as a different set of rules apply to postal applications" What's the difference in the procedure between postal and in peson? Any experiences?

Also, as a side note, he had to argue the fact that a Driving Licence was an official document, as at first they wouldn't accept that either.

The country has gone barmy i tell you

[the scouser]

I don't understand why the clerk would suggest that postal applications are governed by a different set of rules: all applications, irrespective of how they are made, are governed by the same immigration rules.

The applicant has to satisfy the official, inter alia, that they have been living together as husband and wife and will continue to do so. On the assumption that your mate's evidence for the remaining 19 months was up to scratch, and no other doubts existed, there's no reason why that should not have been sufficient to meet the requirements of the rules.

Indeed, by suggesting that a postal application would succeed, the clerk was effectively acknowledging that she was satisfied the requirements of the immigration rules were met, in which case, it's not apparent why she didn't accept the application.

The Home Office insists on seeing a variety of correspondence sent to both parties at the same address and these are normally enough to have the ILR granted. However, this, in itself, demonstrates nothing other than those letters were sent to that address. Certainly, it does not show that the two people live together. Anyone who wished to circumvent the rules could easily do so with a bit of forward planning.

Scouse.