CBM
1st July 2012, 22:35
(this may be in the wrong place - perhaps a moderator can advise?)
I have two friends both of whom have fallen foul of immigration laws lately - one Filipino trying to join his wife in the UK, one Brit trying to stay in the Philippines. Both stories have common elements which are the unwisdom of relying on bad advice and the certainty that both the BIR and the Home Office WILL CHECK.
The Filipino is married to a Filipina nurse who has ILR in the UK and who is in the process of becoming a citizen. He was unwise enough to marry, and to apply for entry to the UK, before the final certificate of annulment of his previous came through, which of course meant that his marriage was bigamous. His wife is Moslem and so he he was advised by a Manila immigration adviser to describe himself as Moslem also, in order to deal with the problem of having married again before the final annulment.
Bad idea - the British Embassy asked him a string of questions about the Moslem faith; he got many of them wrong, they concluded that he was not a Moslem and he got a ten year ban for his trouble. Meanwhile, his final certificate of annulment has come through - all he needed to do was to wait for that.
The other case concerns a Brit who had lived in the Philippines for many years, and who loves the country so much that he is in many ways more Filipino than the Filipinos. The problem was that his Filipina wife had moved to the States and divorced him, there, many years ago, and for the past twelve years he has been living with another lady who cannot get an annulment. He was persuaded to buy a fake 13A visa.
Bad idea - the BIR checked this against their own records and gave him seven days to leave the country - which, as the officer concerned pointed out, was actually pretty generous, as they could have detained him.
I have two friends both of whom have fallen foul of immigration laws lately - one Filipino trying to join his wife in the UK, one Brit trying to stay in the Philippines. Both stories have common elements which are the unwisdom of relying on bad advice and the certainty that both the BIR and the Home Office WILL CHECK.
The Filipino is married to a Filipina nurse who has ILR in the UK and who is in the process of becoming a citizen. He was unwise enough to marry, and to apply for entry to the UK, before the final certificate of annulment of his previous came through, which of course meant that his marriage was bigamous. His wife is Moslem and so he he was advised by a Manila immigration adviser to describe himself as Moslem also, in order to deal with the problem of having married again before the final annulment.
Bad idea - the British Embassy asked him a string of questions about the Moslem faith; he got many of them wrong, they concluded that he was not a Moslem and he got a ten year ban for his trouble. Meanwhile, his final certificate of annulment has come through - all he needed to do was to wait for that.
The other case concerns a Brit who had lived in the Philippines for many years, and who loves the country so much that he is in many ways more Filipino than the Filipinos. The problem was that his Filipina wife had moved to the States and divorced him, there, many years ago, and for the past twelve years he has been living with another lady who cannot get an annulment. He was persuaded to buy a fake 13A visa.
Bad idea - the BIR checked this against their own records and gave him seven days to leave the country - which, as the officer concerned pointed out, was actually pretty generous, as they could have detained him.