Closing the distance USA to UK

[80anthea]

I've been reading the UKBA website and I'm getting myself all confused about the options available.

We are wanting to close the distance with my SO moving from American to live here with me in the UK.

According to the website a 'partner' doesn't necessarily mean married, so would it be possible for him to come here and then us get married in a year or two, or is it easier in terms of visas if we are already married. We have spoken about marriage and it's something we want to do but if he could come here first that would be better in a lot of ways. I don't understand how long he'd be able to stay if we were not married. The original plan was to get married in the states so his family could attend, he's closer to his family than I am mine, and then apply for married partner visas for him to come here.

Looking through the requirements we seem to meet them all, we're gathering evidence for the 'genuine relationship' section and just need my final divorce paper to come through to prove my marriage is completely over.

If anyone has been through this and can offer any advice or tips they'd be greatly appreciated!

[leonsfangirl]

Hi,

If i remember right it's 33 months he'll be able to stay for then he can apply for an extension. As long as you inform them when you do marry you shouldn't have a problem but i would recommend that you don't say that you'll be getting married after his arrival as they might refuse on the grounds that it's the wrong visa as they have separate visa's for a fiance.
I would also suggest that you have a decree absolute before you apply as you need to provide proof that your other relationship has broken down and being separated won't be enough.

I sort advice from a lawyer and he said it's better to be married when applying for settlement Visa's so that's what my husband and i did and his visa was granted last month and he's been living with me for just over a week now.

Best of luck and feel free to PM me and i'll help out any way that i can.

[80anthea]

Well we're a little bit further on but all this gives me a headache, they don't make it easy do they!

I am now in possession of my decree absolute so things should start moving. The general plan and things are by no means set in stone: save money like mad, he'll come here for a couple of weeks in February (we were hoping it would be sooner but he works in the restaurant business and Christmas is his best pay period so it makes sense for him to work there then), he'll then just take vacation to come here and go back to his job. In the meantime we'll start sorting out some kind of wedding over in Virginia, having looked at the marriage license requirements it looks like there shouldn't be any major problems but it's only valid for 60days so we need other things sorting first. We're thinking a very small wedding on his mum's farm but we need to check on who can do the ceremony as neither of us are religious but from what I've read it needs to be a religious ceremony in virginia?

Then we'll apply for visa for the UK and however long that takes until he can live here. This seems to be the cheapest way in terms of visas and the most likely way to be successful. The problem is I can't work out from all the pages I've read how long the visa takes, there seems to be a huge difference of experiences. When he's finally here then we'll have the wedding party for the UK based people.

[leonsfangirl]

Ours was a month, application date was 4th July and his visa was stamped on august 5th.
Go here -> https://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/v...cessing-times/

That will tell you how long visa decisions have taken in the last month or so from where you the application was made.

[80anthea]

Ours was a month, application date was 4th July and his visa was stamped on august 5th.
Go here -> https://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/v...cessing-times/

That will tell you how long visa decisions have taken in the last month or so from where you the application was made.

Thank you, I think I did actually read that one a while back but it was lost somewhere in my mind.

[80anthea]

Wow I can't believe it's been so long since I first made this thread. Things changed slightly as I changed jobs and took a paycut so was under the visa salary threshold. However, now I'll be earning well above it the process has been kick started again.

The plan is still very similar to before and from what we've researched so far this is where we're up to:

- Get married in Virginia: it seems from what I've read I can do this on the VWP as long as I come back here again afterwards. The wedding will be small, still on his Mom's farm. The only thing I'm confused slightly about is that to get the marriage license in Virginia we both have to be present at the office. So we'll have to time it so I can be there, get the license and get married, have a short holiday together and then come back here in school vacation time. This means realistically it'll be Christmas, Easter or next Summer as that's when the longer school holidays are. Christmas maybe too optimistic but next Easter is an option.

- I come back here alone and then as soon as we can start the spousal visa application so he can come here. The cost is $1491 / £960 extortionate for a piece of paper!!

- he moves here, finds work which he can on the spousal visa (I think, from what I've read anyway) which according to the website above seems to get approved very quickly and we all live happily ever after.......

Total cost:

Visa - £958
ESTA - £10
Marriage license - £32
Travel Insurance - £100
Flights - approx £1500 for all of them but could be more
Wedding - as cheap as possible!

Things I haven't even thought about - probably £1000s!!

If anything I've written looks completely wrong or totally unrealistic PLEASE tell me..........

Even if everything goes according to plan, which it rarely does, we're probably still looking at nearly a year before we close the distance completely but we've got this far so I'm sure we can do it.

Oh and the sad thing is, all this is without any visits in the meantime. As any visit adds on an extra £750 at least with the cost of flights We've done a year plus with no visits before but it sucks that if this is what we want then we might not see eachother again until next Easter.