That is pretty outdated advice. Irish immigration controls seem to have gotten more tighter than even the UK these days.

erasmusdt - do you really not understand this?

This is just NOT going to work unless you either get a visa in your own right, or wait until you can enter the UK with your wife (and you will need to check if you can legally be the breadwinner if she is the one with the ancestral visa as the UK government web site suggests that this may NOT be the case).

If you enter the UK illegally, or on a tourist visa, you will NOT be able to work here.

And no one here on Flyertalk is going to help you break the law. It would be stupid and immoral of us to do so.

Also... while it's perhaps none of my business...: Your wife is going through a difficult pregnancy. You have other children. Shouldn't your place be with your family in South Africa?

Oh don be silly...please read carefully....I am asking advise, so for you I will explain it in simpler terms:

We have ANCESTRAL visa's....so we dont need to sneak in anywhere....I was advised by an immigration specialist to avoid Heathrow and rather ravel through Ireland and then on to the Uk to a point of entry as they might not be so strict.
Unfortunately I assumed that there would be border control between Ireland and the Uk.
Also recently my wife's doctor advised against her flying as she is pregnant and the medication they give her will adversely effect her kidney's for which she had treatment.
I do have a work contract signed already and have to start work asap.
I do not have time to mess about with people that want to come make stupid threats...I am not in school anymore... I prefer to hear from people that can offer positive advise or alternatives.

Ok here is how it is.

On your first day of work with any reputable UK company they will demand to see evidence of your right to work in the UK. They will be fined very large amounts if they do not have evidence of this right so HR departments will always ask for proof even from UK citizens.

If you do not have such proof you will be dismissed from your employment and be unable to find any other except low pay jobs filled by illegal immigrants. these jobs pay less than minimum wage and if you are found to be working illegally you will be barred from entering the UK for a long time.

As a taxpayer and UK citizen I have a huge problem with the detritus of the world washing up in the UK and reducing pay rates for everyone else even in professional occupations. if I don't get access to jobs in your country why should you have access to jobs in mine "ancestry" visa or not.

Do you have an ancestral visa in your own right? If you do then there is no problem.

If your wife has an ancestral visa, and you are travelling as her dependent, then you CANNOT enter the country without her. Don't even try it.

What kind of "specialist" is that? He is talking complete nonsense.

Your "specialist" should have known that.

That's why your place should be with her, not in England. And if you are travelling on her ancestral visa then you can't legally travel to England without her in any event, as we keep trying to explain to you.

You can't - it's as simple as that.

The only option you have is to get a work permit in your own right, or wait until your wife is able to travel. There are no other options available to you. End of story.

You cannot enter the UK legally via Ireland if you are a visa national. Ireland and the UK are in a common travel area. Land and sea connections have no border posts. If you fly from Ireland to a UK airport, you will arrive through the same channels as a domestic flight and there will be no border control either (this is not true in the opposite direction but that is irrelevant for you). Moreover, the merest whiff of suspicion by Irish immigration that you might attempt to enter the UK illegally would result in them refusing you entry to Ireland in the first place.

You can fly into a regional UK airport if you wish by connecting from continental Europe with LH, LX, KL, AF, etc... in which case you would go through immigration on arrival in the UK. But don't be under any illusion that it would be any different from entering the UK at LHR.

Either you have a visa that entitles you to enter the UK, in which case they will let you enter, whether it'd be at LHR or elsewhere or you don't and you won't get entry wherever you try to enter from.

If you enter illegally and attempt to work, you run a very high risk of having whatever visa you have cancelled and to be banned from entering the country for many years.

If YOU have an ancestral visa then there's no reason for you trying to sneak into the UK via the back door. Your "immigrant specialist" sounds like a crook to me who "assists" people into countries by illegal means

So the conclusion is that you are LYING and I wouldn't be surprised that there isn't a pregnant wife nor children but just another illegal immigrant trying to get sympathy

OP, you have been given some solid advice from a knowledgeable group of people. You can choose to heed it, or not, but, having worked in the UK, I can tell you that the chances of you working without proper documentation is virtually zero. The penalties to the employer are too great for them to risk it. I'd also consider a different immigration "specialist", your guy sounds more like the type to put you in the back of a lorry in Calais.

I'll just add a few words here having been through all the official routes with Mrs WHBM being from overseas.

Firstly ignore those comments from those in the USA speaking about "attorneys". Attorneys do not exist in the UK.

Secondly, nothing to do with your wife, you need the right documentation yourself for working in the UK, which every company HR department will check on day 1. It is not your wife who will be doing the job, it is you. Even British people starting at many companies have to show their passports nowadays, because that's what the procedure is, and you would certainly be expected to do so, with all the right visas, if you were obviously from overseas. So you need to get this, otherwise what is the point in coming. You will apply for this visa at the British High Commission in South Africa.

The reason why people started going through Ireland is that there are no border controls between the two countries, and never have been (the "Common Travel Area"). The Irish immigration authorities are just as straightforward in identifying people without the right docuentation as those in the UK; in fact people who are from somewhere like Africa who arrive in Dublin directly from overseas without good cause (eg tourist around Europe) are unusual, and stick out even more to them.

An ancestral visa (for those who don't know, a visa to "come back" to Britain from Commonwealth countries if parents/grandparents were British) does allow the family to come with you, as long as you can support them. As I understand it, it is only your wife who qualifies for this, and being pregnant, and also having a medical complication, she is obviously in no position to fully support you all ( a family of four, soon to be five) financially. Some of us here will be wondering what you are doing choosing to leave your wife for another continent at such a time.

Please would we all focus on the questions asked and providing responses to them (if we wish to help) rather than being distracted by socio-political commentary? Thank you!

Your interpretation appears to be the same as mine - i.e., that the OP can enter the country with his wife, but that she has to be able to support him.

I take this to mean that he will not be able to work legally in the UK on the strength of his wife's visa, and that he will need to get a visa/work permit in his own right. In other words, she can work, but he can't.

Does anyone know for sure?

The question that you have not answered is this:-

1. [*]

This is important because you can't just airily say that "we" are on ancestry visas. The person whose grandparent is being relied on has a different visa from that person's spouse.

If it is your grandparent who is being relied on, then the advice from the immigration specialist is bonkers. You are the primary immigrant, and if you qualify, you will qualify at any airport - no need to sneak around looking for somewhere "less strict". If you don't get in, none of your family get in either.

If it is your wife's grandparent who is being relied on, then you cannot travel to the UK without her. Unless she is admitted as the primary immigrant, you will not qualify for entry and will very probably be sent back to South Africa with a black mark against your name. She will not qualify unless she is able to work and intends to take or seek employment in the United Kingdom, and you will not get in unless she can also show that she can support you if you are not working, without you having to have recourse to public funds.

I think it was obliquely contained in the first post

It seems that the OP's wife will have to support him.

http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk/en/howtoap...ukancestry#Q10

There's a few lawyers on here who probably have a better understanding of the exact rules.

The one issue we haven't explicitly covered is that the OP, and any children that are involved as well, need to have their own visas to even travel to the UK if non-tourist entry is contemplated. They can apply for them at the British High Commission in South Africa, but they cannot just all travel together on the wife's visa.

It will be at the visa granting stage that the officials will handle the "can she support you legitimately without recourse to public funds" issue. The prime applicant (wife) will need to provide evidence of funds by showing adequate bank account statements, payslips from the employment that she will use to support them, letters from the wife's employer, everybody's birth certificates, marriage certificate, etc.

Been there, done that.