"Let my adopted children enter the UK" - BBC News

He's on 'open-ended leave'.

More Info on the backstory:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/04/us-surgeon-may-be-forced-to-quit-uk-because-of-visa-nightmare

That's the same article we've been discussing above .


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's the same article we've been discussing above .


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Doh - ignore me!! I was just looking at the bbc story!!! Clearly summer holidays are switching off this teacher's brain!!!

An interesting story, but I'm not surprised.  There seems to be a basic lack of common sense all the way around.  The family didn't do enough research/tried to game the system; the Home Office is full of rule-bound jobsworths; excessive government bureaucracy; the general anti-immigrant/applicant stance. 

Wow I'm cynical.

Still, I hope it all works out for them and they are able to be together as a family on one side of 'the pond' or another.

Well, they've finally had their visas processed :
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/17/american-nhs-surgeon-adopted-sons-granted-visas-patrick-thies-home-office

Also, I did a bit of Googling and the British mother has a blog where she explains the entire situation in detail, and it finally makes sense to me .

Their story:

- She was born in Pakistan to UK parents and got a UK passport
- They moved to the UK when she was 5
- She moved to the US as an adult and got married
- They adopted the 2 boys and they went to visit the UK for a few months
- She found out she was pregnant and she had the baby in the UK, therefore the biological son is British
- They went back to the US when the baby was 2 weeks old
- When they started planning their move, she tried to apply for UK passports for the adopted children but found out that they aren't entitled to UK citizenship because she was born in Pakistan
[- even if she was born in the UK, she may have needed to register the children as British first, before applying for their passports, which is about £900 per child]
- she tried to research visas, called the 'embassy helpline' and was told she could travel to the UK and apply for the visas there
- we know the rest

Of course, if they'd just been advised to apply for Tier 2 Dependant visas from the US in the first place, there wouldn't have been any issues .

(https://gilliansimigrationnightmare.wordpress.com/2017/08/04/i-need-some-scissors-tape-and-a-jet-engine/)

Well, they've finally had their visas processed :
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/17/american-nhs-surgeon-adopted-sons-granted-visas-patrick-thies-home-office

Also, I did a bit of Googling and the British mother has a blog where she explains the entire situation in detail, and it finally makes sense to me .

Their story:

- She was born in Pakistan to UK parents and got a UK passport
- They moved to the UK when she was 5
- She moved to the US as an adult and got married
- They adopted the 2 boys and they went to visit the UK for a few months
- She found out she was pregnant and she had the baby in the UK, therefore the biological son is British
- They went back to the US when the baby was 2 weeks old
- When they started planning their move, she tried to apply for UK passports for the adopted children but found out that they aren't entitled to UK citizenship because she was born in Pakistan
[- even if she was born in the UK, she would have had to register the children as British first, before applying for their passports, which is about £900 per child - which I think is where the 'biological children are treated differently' thing comes in]
- she tried to research visas, called the 'embassy helpline' and was told she could travel to the UK and apply for the visas there
- we know the rest

Of course, if they'd just been advised to apply for Tier 2 Dependant visas from the US in the first place, there wouldn't have been any issues .

(https://gilliansimigrationnightmare.wordpress.com/2017/08/04/i-need-some-scissors-tape-and-a-jet-engine/)

Thank you! Really appreciate you figuring it all out for us ksand! 

The Guardian didn't even get his occupation right, now they are saying he's a Physician's assistant not an Orthopaedic Surgeon.  Do they even have PA's in the UK?

Excellent work ksand.  All makes sense now!

The Guardian didn't even get his occupation right, now they are saying he's a Physician's assistant not an Orthopaedic Surgeon.  Do they even have PA's in the UK?

I saw that... just Googling again, it looks like they're called Physician Associates in the UK and the PA position was established in the UK in 2005. They used to be called Physician Assistants but they changed it to Associates in 2012 to avoid confusion with another NHS position with the same title.

Hmm, interesting - on Wikipedia, it says:
Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was asked to manage the recruitment of 200 physician associates who are expected to come from the USA for 40 NHS trusts in September 2015.[15]

Well, they've finally had their visas processed :
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/17/american-nhs-surgeon-adopted-sons-granted-visas-patrick-thies-home-office

Also, I did a bit of Googling and the British mother has a blog where she explains the entire situation in detail, and it finally makes sense to me .

Their story:

- She was born in Pakistan to UK parents and got a UK passport
- They moved to the UK when she was 5
- She moved to the US as an adult and got married
- They adopted the 2 boys and they went to visit the UK for a few months
- She found out she was pregnant and she had the baby in the UK, therefore the biological son is British
- They went back to the US when the baby was 2 weeks old
- When they started planning their move, she tried to apply for UK passports for the adopted children but found out that they aren't entitled to UK citizenship because she was born in Pakistan
[- even if she was born in the UK, she may have needed to register the children as British first, before applying for their passports, which is about £900 per child]
- she tried to research visas, called the 'embassy helpline' and was told she could travel to the UK and apply for the visas there
- we know the rest

Of course, if they'd just been advised to apply for Tier 2 Dependant visas from the US in the first place, there wouldn't have been any issues .

(https://gilliansimigrationnightmare.wordpress.com/2017/08/04/i-need-some-scissors-tape-and-a-jet-engine/)

It's all a bit odd as it seems they did enough research to find out that a "British by descent" parent could not pass their citizenship on unless the child was born on the UK; which she did while on a visit to the UK: then why such poor reseach from them for their adopted children?

His Tier 2 sponsor could have told him how he could bring his adopted children to settle in the UK if they didn't do their own research on this (type something like 'how do I bring my adopted children to the UK' in a search engine). Even with their poor research for their adopted children, they would have been told what visas to get when they arrived in the UK.  But from what the papers say, they didn't want to do that. Why?

I wonder what their research was like on having to pay the NHS for the birth while on a visit to the UK?

I wonder what their research was like on having to pay the NHS for the birth while on a visit to the UK?

Ha! 

Thank you! Really appreciate you figuring it all out for us ksand! 

The Guardian didn't even get his occupation right, now they are saying he's a Physician's assistant not an Orthopaedic Surgeon.  Do they even have PA's in the UK?

That's why I never read the left wing The Guardian.  They struggle to find enough people to pay for what they write.

The Guardian has been consistently loss-making. The National Newspaper division of GMG, which also includes The Observer, reported operating losses of £49.9m in 2006, up from £18.6m in 2005.[104] The paper was therefore heavily dependent on cross-subsidisation from profitable companies within the group.

.......................


In June 2011 Guardian News and Media revealed increased annual losses of £33m and announced that it was looking to focus on its online edition for news coverage, leaving the print edition to contain more comments and features. It was also speculated that The Guardian might become the first British national daily paper to be fully online.[106][107]

For the three years up to June 2012, the paper lost £100,000 a day, which prompted Intelligent Life to question whether The Guardian could survive.[108]

Between 2007 and 2014 The Guardian Media Group sold all their side businesses, of regional papers and online portals for classifieds and consolidated, into The Guardian as sole product. The sales let them acquire a capital stock of £838.3m as of July 2014, supposed to guarantee the independence of The Guardian in perpetuity. In the first year, the paper made more losses than predicted, and in January 2016 the publishers announced, that The Guardian will cut 20 per cent of staff and costs within the next three years

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Ownership_and_finances

They could have saved themselves a fortune and tons of bureaucratic pain if they had just come onto UKY! 

They could have saved themselves a fortune and tons of bureaucratic pain if they had just come onto UKY!

Agreed - it's a shame they put their faith in people they believed to be 'experts' and didn't do the research themselves!

Agreed - it's a shame they put their faith in people they believed to be 'experts' and didn't do the research themselves!

People put SO MUCH faith in the UKVI call line.  We tell people time and time again to not call or that they received incorrect info, but the temptation is too great.  ESPECIALLY if UKVI told them what they want to hear, even if it's incorrect.  Applying in country is a biggie!

People put SO MUCH faith in the UKVI call line.  We tell people time and time again to not call or that they received incorrect info, but the temptation is too great.  ESPECIALLY if UKVI told them what they want to hear, even if it's incorrect.  Applying in country is a biggie!

To be fair, though, it's not illogical to conclude that the official helpline of the official agency for dealing with immigration would be able to provide accurate information about immigration. We all know that UKY is chockka with expert guidance and clear explanations of procedure, but most reasonable people would trust an official helpline over a random Internet forum. The blame here lies squarely at the feet of UKVI for 1) having such labyrinthine rules in the first place, and 2) not providing reliable guidance for navigating them.

To be fair, though, it's not illogical to conclude that the official helpline of the official agency for dealing with immigration would be able to provide accurate information about immigration. We all know that UKY is chockka with expert guidance and clear explanations of procedure, but most reasonable people would trust an official helpline over a random Internet forum. The blame here lies squarely at the feet of UKVI for 1) having such labyrinthine rules in the first place, and 2) not providing reliable guidance for navigating them.

Exactly