complex student dependent visa problem

Hello all,
I just registered on this forum to post a question I hope
I'm not seriously in the dark about. I'm planning to move
to the UK this summer to join my boyfriend, who I met
here in America. He's Russian and just started a PhD
program in London. (He was supposed to start a PhD in
Boston, but thanks to my lovely president's new immigration
policies his visa to reenter after a vacation took 6 months
to process-ergo the change in venue). My boyfriend
is pretty confident that marrying me will enable me to work
there (I don't think I can afford to just hang around for
the years it'll take to get the PhD), but I'm not sure how
well he's researched the subject. Does it make a difference,
for example, whether we marry in the US or in England as
far as my getting a work visa? Does he first need to prove
in Britain that he can support me financially (which is
doubtful in London!) before I can get a work visa?

Thanks so much.

Hi Molly and welcome to the site!

Your situation is a bit unusual, so you may need to contact the British consulate or check the Home Office website to find out the specifics.

However, what I *do* know is that if your boyfriend is here on a student visa (which I believe he would be since Russia is not part of the EU and he'd have to have some type of visa to study here), then he will only have permission to work part time.  I wouldn't think a spouse of a student would be able to work at all.  Until he has full rights of residency...which takes a couple of years living in the UK, you won't be able to get a visa to work here as his spouse.

The difficulty you may have is that in order to get past immigration here in the UK, you will not be able to say that you are coming over to get married and live with him if you don't have a fiancee visa...which you can't get unless you have a UK resident or citizen sponsor you. If you get married in the US and come back here together, it's still going to look a bit suspicious to immigration because you can't get a spousal visa before you come over for the same reason and it will be obvious you are coming over to stay with him.

So basically, his having a student visa does not entitle him to UK residency and citizenship rights.  THis means that the UK will probably not grant you any kind of visa because he isn't allowed to sponsor your stay in the country because he's only a visitor too.  Make any sense?

If I were you, I'd check out the websites for the Home Office and check the details of your boyfriends visa.  Therein lie your answers!

Hope that helps a bit and sorry if it's all confusing!

Hello again,

A little more info to hopefully help with replies: yes, I have
read that students in the UK are allowed to bring their
spouses and that the spouses may work if the student
is to be there for more than one year (my boyfriend has a
5 year contract).  But I don't know how I can apply
that rule to me, since we are not married yet, and I also
don't understand why I need a fiancee visa in order to get
married- can't we just get hitched in London when I show
up on an automatic 6 month tourist visa generally granted
to Americans?

Oy vey- the information must be buried somewhere, but
it's impossible to retrieve.

Hello again,

I also
don't understand why I need a fiancee visa in order to get
married- can't we just get hitched in London when I show
up on an automatic 6 month tourist visa generally granted
to Americans?

Actually, no, you can't really do that legally.  When you come to the UK, they will ask you about the purpose of your visit at immigration.  If you tell them you are visiting then you will be expected to do just that...and then leave without having taken any employment or overstayed. You'll have to have funds to prove you can support yourself for the entire length of your stay, and they can and will search your belongings for anything that might prove you have other plans if they suspect you aren't being truthful.  

You may also be asked to prove that you are returning at an appropriate date within the 6 months the visa allows.  If you arrive on a tourist visa and get married, you will have to prove that when you came over, you had no intention of doing that.  And that isn't an easy thing to prove.  

It seems to me that coming over here on false pretenses (ie, on a visitor visa when you clearly are planning on staying and working here) is a very bad idea and could end up in deportation.  Trust me....don't mess with immigration.  There are lots of people here who had stronger cases for living here who have gotten turned away for the slightest suspicion of not following the rules.  It happens more than you might imagine.

I'd think the easiest thing for you both is to get married in the US, and then let him apply for your spouse of a student visa from the UK once he's here.  I'm sure whoever is working with him through this PhD programme can help with this.  I'm quite confident that you won't be able to come and be with him here in the UK unless you are married first.

I'm not trying to scare you but I'd highly recommend talking to someone at the Home Office about your particular situation since it is a bit unusual.

Hi Wishstar,

Thank you for the reply. Maybe we will just get married here
(which requires my boyfriend getting a tourist visa to come
here, a whole other mess), but I would like to get married in London, because it's... cool, and because getting married there would fit in better with other plans we have. I think the problem is that I can't change a tourist visa to another visa; does it sound outrageous to get married in England, return to America, and then go back to England on a different visa?

Hi mollypicon,

You are absolutely right, the dependant has full work permit rights if the husbands/wife's student visa is more then 12 months. I'm in the same situation, except that we are married and coming form sydney, wife is going to study in london (4 years). But, in order to confirm all this, I have contacted lawyers in the UK and at the moment I'm waiting for the answers. I tried to search different forums around but could not get any positive answers. (must be a very rare case
With your case, I can get married even in Amsterdam or London, just contact the department before hand and speak with the British consulate in the US. They will tell you what kind of documents you are required to bring along etc...

cheers

This is probably going to sound so stupid, but ... why not get married in Russia? It must be far easier for you to go and get married there than get married in America.

It must be possible to get married in the UK without a settlement visa (which is not what youre going for) because people from other countries come over to get married in big castles and whatnot all the time.

Im by no means educated on the topic at hand though. Just tossing in some thoughts. If you did manage to get married in the UK you might also want to check to see if the marriage certificate is reccognized in Russia. I wouldnt know.

Best of luck anyhow,
Sarah

People coming here to get married in castles etc probably just come on tourist visas/visa waiver and only stay a short time. The idea of getting married in Russia sounds great to me, how romantic!

The problem is logistics - her boyfriend is already in London starting his PhD.  I don't know the economics of it, but I can't imagine it would be terribly *cheap* for both of them to fly to Russia!  Then again - it might be...I really don't know!

Hi again Molly

Having had a look at the IND website on this, it seems to me that unfortunately the bottom line is that only British Citizens or those present and settled in the UK can sponsor a fiancee. The student policy is quite clear, students can only sponsor spouse/parnter and children, not fiances, not any other relative. You have to have been married BEFORE arriving in the UK to come as his spouse.

Therefore I don't think Immigration is going to entertain the idea of you coming here as a visitor, getting married and applying to stay here, although you should ring your nearest British consulate to double check on that.

You will have to either get married here then leave again to apply or get married outside the UK and apply.

It sucks but that is how it appears to be to me and I have many years of experience interpreting legalese (qualifications in it even) and in the immigration field (with refugees I hasten to add so don't look at me for ALL the answers!)

Good luck Molly and I hope you are able to work it out somehow.  Have you thought about enrolling for a course here yourself and coming here that way?

Hi everyone,
It seems, then, that marrying in the UK on a tourist visa and
returning to the US to apply for a spousal visa should be
the easiest thing, right? Or, can't we get married anywhere
but the UK (Paris, for example) and apply for the spousal
visa either from where we got married or from the US (where I
need to visit for a  while anyway)? We don't really want to
get married in the US (and there's his visa to consider for that);
other options look better.

I don't mean to sound thick here, but if your boyfriend is Russian are they likely to give you a spousal visa in the US to live in the UK?  This is a very complex problem.  I would have thought you would have to apply for a spousal visa from Russia if that is where your boyfriend got his student visa from.  

I would highly suggest you contact as many people as possible and call them more than once as you never get the same answer twice!

Good Luck!

Hi everyone,
It seems, then, that marrying in the UK on a tourist visa and
returning to the US to apply for a spousal visa should be
the easiest thing, right?

I would say this is probably your best bet.

Or, can't we get married anywhere
but the UK (Paris, for example) and apply for the spousal
visa either from where we got married or from the US (where I
need to visit for a  while anyway)? We don't really want to
get married in the US (and there's his visa to consider for that);
other options look better.

I don't see why you still can't marry in the UK, although you would need to return to the US to get your visa to live in the UK.  I don't know that marrying in a place like Paris would work either (I understand there to be a residency requirement of like two years), but perhaps Holland is a choice.  I know a US couple who got married there.

ANYway...wherever you decide to marry, really, is up to you and your partner and I don't think that's so much an issue.  The real bottom line is that once you are married you will need to return to the US to obtain the proper visa in order to come live with your new husband in the UK.

I'd say come to the UK, with proof of ties to the US to show if necessary, marry, then return to the US and apply to the nearest visa issuing British Consulate (usually NYC, Chicago or LA) for a visa as spouse of a student studying in Britain.
The residence requirement in France for marriage is a month so marrying in France is not very practical. Also being from Russia I'm not sure if he'd need a visa to visit France.

Ah, I'm glad to see my topic is still active. Getting
married in London and returning here for the spousal
visa does sound like the way to go, but are there
any foreseeable problems? Am I lying to immigration
when I enter on a tourist visa and don't mention that
I'm getting married? Will I need to show a bunch of happy pics and references from other people that we are indeed a couple? Do I need to show that I won't
be a dependent of the British welfare state? Etc.