Hello all.
My filipina wife's UK Settlement VISA was refused recently after a 5 month wait.
We failed on paragraph 281(v) of the Immigration Rules:
"the parties will be able to maintain themselves and any dependants adaquately without any recourse to public funds;"
The reasons they gave for this were that my bank account is overdrawn and was overdrawn for the 6 month period covered by the bank statements we provided.
As you can imagine we're devastated with the decision. At no time was it ever specified asa requirement that we would need to show credit in my bank account, nor was our financial situation taken in to consideration - that I earn over £50K/year and my wife has savings in excess of $75000, and that she would also remain employed by her family business and continue to receive a salary in the UK.
In hindsight we were very naive not to consider this and since investigating our options we've discovered that by my being overdrawn we didn't stand a chance of having the visa approved.
We have been advised to write a Letter of Consideration to appeal against the decision. We plan to pay off my overdraft and put the account into credit by £2-3000 and submit a bank statement to confirm this.
We are wondering if anyone has done this and had any success? We're skeptical as this course of action, a Letter of Reconsideration, was not mentioned in the official documentation that came with the Refusal, although this action was recommended to us by an adviser at http://www.uk-visa-appeal.co.uk/
We're also considering submitting an Appeal although the timescales and costs are somewhat off-putting. However, friends have told us about similar cases where the Appeal route did work for them and we should go ahead anyway (there's no initial cost so why not, right?)
It's been mentioned that Immigration often look for reasons to refuse a visa and an initial refusal in not uncommon. Again, any thoughts on this?
Our other option (and most likely to succeed) is to re-apply from scratch. With a "fixed" bank account we can not see any reason for the visa to be refused as we "passed" all the other checks.
I am in Manila for 2 weeks; we're going to the British Embassy today to see if they can advise us on anything - although we're not getting our hopes up.
Any advice or recommendations of legal services would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Ben & Liana Joyce
