It's so odd to be targeting families when trying to reduce immigration! You'd think they'd be targeting workers more than anything, but entering on a work visa is fairly straightforward and it only takes a couple hundred £ and about 3 weeks processing time afaik...
It wasn’t the cost or the processing time that they restricted for work visas, it was how to qualify for one in the first place.
They closed several of the easier work visa routes, and then made it more difficult to qualify for all the other ones.
For example, in order to get sponsorship for a work visa, the job had to either:
- be listed on the Skills Shortage List, at a particular skill level and salary
Or
- the employer had to prove they couldn’t find a single qualified UK or EU worker (out of 500 million people), before they were allowed to hire someone from outside the EEA… which basically meant that unless you worked in a position that was so highly-skilled that only a handful of people in the entire world were qualified to do the job (such as a world-renowned doctor, a scientist, academic professor, top business executive etc.), you would not be able to get sponsorship for a work visa.
I have a friend from the US who has undergrad and masters degrees, and she tried for years to qualify for a UK work visa, with no luck at all… her profession (journalist) was not on the Skills Shortage List, so no company would sponsor her, and the work visa she would have qualified for without needing employer sponsorship (Tier 1 General) was abolished before she could apply for it.
She had several successful interviews, but the companies were like: “sorry, we’re not allowed to sponsor you for a work visa but if you can get another visa that allows you to work in the UK, we can hire you once you are living here”.
She gave up on moving to the UK and started looking for a new job in the US instead.
His visa won't even allow him to work, not the fiancé visa anyway, he will only be able to work once we finalise everything, and how am I supposed to support both of us through that while in full time education? I have no idea...
The point is that you are not supposed to be able to.
The visa qualification rules are such that almost no one is able to qualify to sponsor a spousal visa while being a full-time student… unless of course they are rich with large amounts of cash savings they can use.
The only other way to qualify would be if you and/or your boyfriend has £18,600 per year in NON-employment income that will continue once he moves to the UK, for example:
- rent from property you own
- interest from stocks and shares
- interest from savings
- Child Maintenance payments
- annual PhD stipend
That is awful! Is the dependant visa not an option for you? It sounds like it's exactly suited for your situation: gov.uk/uk-family-visa/adult-dependent-relative
The adult dependent relative visa is for people who cannot take care of themselves and rely 100% on the UK sponsor for financial and physical support.
In order to qualify, they must not be able to work or earn money themselves and have no savings or any other money of their own, have to be unable to do daily tasks like feed or dress themselves, and they need round-the-clock care. They also must have no way of accessing the care they need in their home country, or have any living relatives there who can take care of them, meaning they HAVE to come to the UK to be taken care of, or they will not survive.
There used to be a ‘Retired Person of Independent Means’ visa which they could have used to come to the UK in the past (as long as they could show they could support themselves without needing to claim UK government benefits), but that visa type was also abolished several years ago.
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