My boyfriend has been accepted to a University in Manchester. We applied for me as a dependent on his visa but when he sent out the application he included no evidence of our relationship. So I was rejected a visa.
Sorry to hear that.
We could have appealed the case within 28 days but had no shared bank accounts and our lease was only about a year long. We've been together 5 years but have no idea how to legally prove that.
An appeal would not have been successful anyway as they were correct to refuse the visa due to you not supplying the required documents. Plus an appeal takes about a year to be decided anyway, by which time it would have been too late to join your boyfriend if his course is only 1 year long.
Lawyers said I don't need a 6 month visitor visa just to visit even if i had been rejected for a visa.
As others have said, the lawyers were very incorrect. If you have been refused a visa, you should apply for a visitor visa before travel, because there is a good chance you will not be allowed in without one (as you have since discovered).
So I get to London with my boyfriend, all financial documents in hand, email from lawyer about not needing a visa and non-refundable return ticket back to America at the end of my stay.
They detained me for 20 hours and sent me back to America. They did not believe I would leave since I applied for a year visa that was rejected and I had no job or school to go back to in the US.
Again, unfortunately, they were correct to refuse you entry (you were NOT deported, because you have to be in the UK in the first place to be deported... and you never made it into the country).
In order to meet the requirements to be let into the UK as a visitor, you have to show:
- the return ticket
- bank statements showing you have enough money to live of for the duration of your visit without working
- that you have NO intention of living in the UK at all (as you had just applied for a Tier 4 Dependant and were travelling with your boyfriend, this would have been very difficult to prove)
- evidence of ties in the US that you must return to, which mean you will not try to stay in the UK, such as:
- a job (letter from your employer giving you time off and stating when you will return to work)
- a home (evidence of maintaining a home in the US)
- a family/relationship to go back to (not easy to prove if that person is living in the UK)
- any other commitments, such as interviews, appointments, events etc. in the US that you have to get back for
I have applied for school in Manchester but they will not give a CAS number to part time students.
You cannot get a Tier 4 student visa for part-time study... it's not allowed - you have to be studying full-time in order to be issued with a CAS.
Basically, as others have said, your options are:
- if your boyfriend's course is at NQF level 7 or higher (i.e. masters degree level) AND you have lived together in a relationship 'akin to marriage' (i.e. both names on leases/bills etc.) for the last 24 consecutive months, you can apply again for a Tier 4 Dependant visa, providing hard, paper evidence of living together for those 24 months.
- get married and then apply for a Tier 4 Dependant visa as his wife (might be difficult though if he is in the UK and has to be in school, because he may not be able to easily get back to the US to get married, and you would need a Marriage Visitor Visa to marry in the UK, and would then have to return to the US to apply for the dependant visa.
- see if you can qualify for a student visa yourself... but you would have to be studying full-time and it's a bit late in the year now to get a visa as most courses have already started.
- try applying for a visitor visa again in a few months time... but you will need to be able to show ties to the US, such as a job, home, other commitments you must return to, and you will need to be able to show that you are a genuine visitor and are NOT trying to use the visitor visa to live in the UK with your boyfriend.
