Fresh Application in January - Payslips and Bank Statements Advice Please

Hello all,

In December we had a heartbreaking rejection due to a mistake we made in our application.

I was a self employed real estate agent in the USA before returning to the UK in November to take up a new job.  Instead of ticking both boxes for how I will demonstrate my ability to support my USA citizen spouse (employment income and self-employment income) we ticked only 'employment income'.  This meant that the home office were looking for tax returns, etc., where I provided only bank statements from the USA and a letter from my old real estate broker showing the amounts I made in commission and when.  I also provided my current employment letter for my job in the UK.

I understand I made a mistake in the application but I still feel the home office took a very hard line approach considering it was very clear I had in fact received well in excess of the £18,600 annually as a real estate agent.

Now we are hoping to reapply.  I am in the fortunate position of earning a good salary so I will have earned the threshold £18,600 with my current employer by the end of next week.  This I understand makes my wife a Category B applicant.  Obviously I want to get my wife's new application in ASAP as the time apart from her and our 11 month old daughter (I've now seen them for one week in the last 2+ months) is killing me.

I have engaged a lawyer who is drafting a strong cover letter to support our application.  It will no doubt elaborate on the point that in addition to my 11 month old daughter, who is a dual US/UK citizen through me, I have two other daughters from a previous marriage who live here in the UK.  A visa rejection makes it impossible for us all to have a life together so I really need this!

The lawyer is also advising on the appropriate documents to submit but I do want to check with the forums on payslips and bank statements, so finally to my question.... are bank statements printed from my online banking account acceptable?  They show my name, address, the banks logo and branch address (Bank of Scotland), and can be printed in colour.  Will these suffice?

As for payslips, I receive these electronically but they show my gross and taxable income to date, my name, address, and national insurance number.  Surely these will be acceptable as well?

Thanks for any advice.

Jordan

Sorry again for your rejection before, but it sounds like you'll be okay with the next application .

I understand I made a mistake in the application but I still feel the home office took a very hard line approach considering it was very clear I had in fact received well in excess of the £18,600 annually as a real estate agent.

Unfortunately, they did not take a hard-line approach. They simply did their job. The spousal visa is a tick-box visa, if your documents tick all the boxes, you get the visa; if they don't tick all the boxes, you don't get the visa.

You were self-employed, but you applied under category B for employed income, that meant that they had to tick the following boxes:
- 12 full months of payslips showing a total of £18,600 earned
- 12 full months of bank statements showing the deposit of every single payslip (the only reason for sending the bank statements is to verify the payslips going in)
- current job contract or job offer from your UK job
- letter from current employer confirming your employment (if you have already started it)
- any payslips and bank statements from the UK job you may have already

They needed to be able to tick all of those boxes in order to issue the visa, but because you didn't send payslips, they could not tick the boxes, therefore it was an automatic refusal.

Similarly, in order for your income to have counted as self-employment, you would have needed to send 14 different documents showing your self-employment income... and bank statements are only 1 of those 14 documents, therefore that would have been 13 boxes they couldn't tick, which again would have been an automatic refusal (even if only 1 of the 14 documents is missing, it's still a refusal).

I have engaged a lawyer who is drafting a strong cover letter to support our application.  It will no doubt elaborate on the point that in addition to my 11 month old daughter, who is a dual US/UK citizen through me, I have two other daughters from a previous marriage who live here in the UK.  A visa rejection makes it impossible for us all to have a life together so I really need this!

You really do not need a lawyer. Or a strong cover letter. You make a mistake, you have corrected the mistake and are now applying again. The only thing that the refusal will do is it may cause your application to take a little longer this time as they look into the reason for refusal.

The cover letter simply needs to say that you are reapplying because you were refused due to not meeting the financial requirements and that you are including the refusal documentation with this application.

The lawyer is also advising on the appropriate documents to submit but I do want to check with the forums on payslips and bank statements, so finally to my question.... are bank statements printed from my online banking account acceptable?  They show my name, address, the banks logo and branch address (Bank of Scotland), and can be printed in colour.  Will these suffice?

As for payslips, I receive these electronically but they show my gross and taxable income to date, my name, address, and national insurance number.  Surely these will be acceptable as well?

Printed online payslips and bank statements are NOT acceptable on their own.

The payslips must either be:
- official payslips printed by the company and handed or mailed to you
OR
- online payslips that are accompanied by a letter on company letterhead, signed by a senior official, confirming their authenticity

The bank statements must be:
- official statements printed by the bank and mailed to you
OR
- online statements that have either been stamped by the bank on EVERY PAGE, or accompanied by a letter from the bank confirming their authenticity.

See here for the formatting requirements of all the financial documents:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-appendix-fm-se-family-members-specified-evidence

Just to add that your daughters are not particularly relevant to the application and will not have any bearing on the outcome, so there isn't much point in mentioning them in a cover letter.

If they did have any bearing, then your previous application would have been considered and approved under Article 8 instead of being refused.

However, the only time Article 8 will actually lead to an approval in an application made outside the UK, is when the US applicant has a UK citizen child who is ALREADY living in the UK and who they are currently separated from, and that child would face considerable hardship if they were to be permanently separated from the applicant due to a visa refusal - however,  in your case, your daughter and wife are already living together in the US, and if the visa is refused, then the argument from UKVI would be that they don't need to approve the visa because you, the UK sponsor, could just return to the US to live with them instead of them getting a visa for the UK.

So, for a cover letter, you just want to say something like:

To The Entry Clearance Officer,

Please find enclosed my application for a settlement visa to join my husband in the UK. I would like the visa vignette to start on X date, as per the Intended Travel Date listed in my application.

I previously applied for this visa on X date, but it was refused due to not sending the correct financial requirement documents. I have now rectified this mistake and am including all the requirement documents this time. I am also including my refusal paperwork from the previous application.

The following documents are included in my application package:
[Document List]

Yours Faithfully,
Her Name