Uk settlement visa for niece?

[williewolf]

Does anyone know if it is possible to obtain a UK settlement visa for our Thai niece.

My predicimate is as follows, our Thai niece who is six years old lives with us and we fully support and take care of her. She has visited the UK with us before on a visitors visa  and traveled out of the country with her parents permission. 

My elderly mother lives in the UK and  needs heart surgery.I am going to the UK to take care of her and would like my wife to accompany me. We think the care required would be long term so I have thought about applying for a settlement visa. The problem is there is nobody to take care of our niece so we want her to come as well. As this could be long term we are concerned about her schooling so we thought if we could get her a settlement visa as well she could go to school in the UK.

As I am living here on a retirement visa we would go down the savings route instead of employment and I have adequate finances to cover this.

Do you think it possible for us to obtain a visa for her?

We visited the adoption centre yesterday to seek information about that but we were told that could take up to two years.

Any help/advice would be most welcome. Thanks.

[Krataiboy]

You would have to adopt your niece to have any chance of achieving settlement in the UK. And yes, the adoption process is involved lengthy. I know because I tried to adopt my stepdaughter when she was 15 but was told that she would be 16 (and therefore ineligible) by the time the process was complete.

 

One of the documents I was asked to provide was an affidavit stating that I was not a resident of the UK. I found this worrying because I am an "alien"  in Thailand, living here on a retirement visa which has to be extended annually and can be revoked at any time. If this happened for any reason, what would be my status? Stateless, despite having a British passport?

 

The rules change over time and it is several years since I went through this particular mill. Should you decide to pursue the adoption route, it would obviously make sense to do the research first, initially by contacting the Thai Adoption Centre in Bangkok and the UK immigration authorities.

 

Good luck.

[chickenslegs]

 

There is a UK child study visa - but the child would have to be enroled in a fee-paying independent school.

 

https://www.gov.uk/child-study-visa

 

[roath]

You would have to adopt your niece to have any chance of achieving settlement in the UK. And yes, the adoption process is involved lengthy. I know because I tried to adopt my stepdaughter when she was 15 but was told that she would be 16 (and therefore ineligible) by the time the process was complete.
 
One of the documents I was asked to provide was an affidavit stating that I was not a resident of the UK. I found this worrying because I am an "alien"  in Thailand, living here on a retirement visa which has to be extended annually and can be revoked at any time. If this happened for any reason, what would be my status? Stateless, despite having a British passport?
 
The rules change over time and it is several years since I went through this particular mill. Should you decide to pursue the adoption route, it would obviously make sense to do the research first, initially by contacting the Thai Adoption Centre in Bangkok and the UK immigration authorities.
 
Good luck.

You would only be stateless if you revoked your citizenship....which is not usually accepted if you have no other citizenship. Residency is simply.where you are resident at that particular time, which can be temporary or permanent residency. If you move back to the U.K. then you.change your residency status from residency in Thailand to residency in the U.K.. Even if you have residency in Thailand, if your domicile remains in the U.K. then you remain liable for.U.K. tax. If your domicile is Thailand this means that you have effectively cut all ties with the U.K. apart from.citizenship. It is all a bit technical but basically you needn't worry about losing your UK citizenship just because you declare yourself resident.or even.domiciled abroad

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[steady]

Yes, it can be done. We did it in September 2012 and, from what the OP has written, it appears that we were in a very similar position. Our niece stayed with us as another child of the family but nothing official was in place and we had done a couple of visit visas to the UK previously without any bother (we did have a KP14 from the amphur). She went to the same school as our natural children, had the same health insurance, got the same school uniforms, dental treatment, days out etc etc. We had receipts and photos which proved this. 

 

Our niece had lived with us for about 3 years (if I remember correctly) at the time of the application which took much longer to process than was the norm at that time. My wife and our niece's mother were both phoned by the Embassy and had quite long discussions.

 

I remember that one of the conditions of a "de facto" adoption visa was that all connections to the natural parents had been cut. In our case the niece's mother was still totally included in the wife's family. Our niece's dad (wife's brother) died when she was very young and her mother just couldn't take care of her when she had to work. In the application I clearly stated that we lived about 600km from the mother, and left it at that. The Thai woman who talked to my wife and niece's mother, however did ask about when they had last had contact, which was answered truthfully and the situation was explained and the embassy's Thai employee seems to have applied a wholesome common sense approach and realised that this was just a normal family situation which is so common in Thailand.

 

When I asked about the likelihood of it being possible I remember that every forum I was on only ever returned negative replies saying that it couldn't be done. I think that the best I got was someone saying how difficult it would be and that they had never heard of anyone being successful. Well at least you have heard of someone being successful but it will still be a long hard slog. I remember digging around for receipts, photos, school documents and other things that proved our niece stayed with us and then quoting the UKBA (as it was then) rules in my application saying why I met them, or why certain other regulations did not affect us. It's so long ago I can't remember the details but I do remember lots of reading and re-doing letters before the application was ready.

 

Anyway good luck to the OP, you're in for a lot of work - but at least you know that it's possible to be successful.