Immagration help needed
 

Hi

I need some some serious help here. I was offered a job in the UK. We(wife and 2 kids) will apply for our ancestral visas now.

Unfortunately my wife and children will not be able to join me right now but in December. My wife would have flown with me to enter the Uk as she is the main applicant on our visas. Her doctor just informed her she should not fly due to complications in her pregnancy.

Now the questions....What is my chances of passing immigration at Heathrow on my own?

Would it be better to fly to Dublin, go and check out the sites and then take a ferry to the Uk?

Ps We are from South Africa

I recommend that you DO NOT take chances with Immigration. Find yourself an EXPERIENCED IMMIGRATION ATTORNEY!

Welcome to FT, and sorry to hear about your wife's complications. If your wife is the only one in the family with the relevant UK ancestry, then I agree that it is a risk to arrive without her.

I would either consult an immigration attorney as suggested, or inform your prospective employer of the issue. Since your wife was planning on joining you in December, I'm guessing that if all goes well with the pregnancy and subsequent birth, that schedule can still be kept, which is only pushing back your employment by a few months. Most employers who are accustomed to hiring from overseas are very used to these sorts of scenarios.

Good luck,

tb

You will need the appropriate visa stamp in your passport to allow you to start work in the UK. The HR dept should require to see this (or they will be fined heavily for breaking the law). You will also need this to apply for a national insurance number; the equivalent of a US social security ID.

Without your wife with you, I dont see how you would be allowed to enter the UK except as a visitor.

If you can not afford an attorney...at least discuss concerns with UK immigration IN your country of citizenship.

One of the 'fly on the wall' documentaries about UK immigration had a newly married couple stopped. He was on a student visa but Her visa was acceptable. He was refused, but she was admitted.

Caution is strongly advised.

Just for clarification... Are you saying that your wife is eligible for an ancestral visa, but you are not?

Would you not be able to get a visa linked to your job?

The way OP has phrased it is as if he is using the family provisions of the Ancestry visa to get into the UK. If so then he cannot enter the UK without his wife as she is the one with the visa.

If he's entitled to an Ancestry visa in his own right then he needs to make his own application.

In either case he needs to have a word with the agency that issued the visa as circumstances have changed

After reading the information on the ukvisas.gov.uk web site... I think the OP had better check that he will be able to work in the UK if he enters the country on his wife's ancestral visa.

The web site says:

It says that the main applicant has to be able to support their family.

It doesn't say, anywhere, that family members are allowed to work to support themselves.

Maybe I'm missing something... but I think the OP definitely wants to double-check on his eligibility to work.

OK....so the conclusion is dont fly on my own and dont enter the UK from Ireland as I wont have the appropriate stamp in my passport.
How about this:
I fly to Ireland, cross on the ferry ( there should be some form of border control) then if asked where my wife is say she is coming in a week but I have to start work now(show them the booked ticket) if they still refuse entry I sit right there and wait while she gets on a plane(which her doctor doesn't recommend) and wait for her to enter and then enter after her.

The reason for entering via Ireland is because everybody tells me they are not that full of nonsense. I do not want to sneak in, just pass through a not so crappy border control.

The best advice anyone can give you here is to re-read post#2.

You will not be able to "sit and wait" for your wife to arrive. If you are refused entry you will be back on the next flight from whence you came

Oh boy, you are just asking for it aren't you.

Irish border controls have access to the same information as their UK counterparts so an attmept to use a not so crappy border control is more likely to bring you to the notice of the authorities as they are used to people trying to be "clever".

And yes YOU ARE TRYING TO SNEAK IN, you are trying to work in the UK illegally. Your right to live and work in the UK is TOTALLY dependent on that of your wife. Without her being present you do not have the right to live or work in the UK and anyone employing you is committing a serious offence which under the present government isn't going to be treated lightly

Forget about the Irish route. That's a recipe for endless complications and a high likelihood of finding yourself banned from entry into the UK for a long period. There are no border controls between Ireland and the UK (other than spot checks). Your visa will not be activated and therefore you will be in the UK illegally.

If you are a visa national and want to enter the UK legally, there is really no alternative to entering the UK via a point with immigration facilities. If your visa is one that allows you to join your wife, then you cannot enter without her being here.

Frankly, in your situation, you would really need specialist professional advice rather than advice from random persons on a website.

OK I thought there would be a point of entry in Hollyhead, my mistake.
How about flying from Dublin to Manchester that's still a international flight.
Somebody must check passports there and stamp them....

I really don't get what you are trying to do other than circumvent entering the UK legally.

Even if you do manage to sneak into the UK illegally, your new employer may want to see your visa to prove you are legal to work. You will have to fill out a mountain of paperwork to get into the UK "system" for National Health, taxes, etc. Even if they don't, then when your wife gets there and you try to get your legal visa you will be SOL because you entered on a tourist visa and not the work visa and would be engaing in an illegal activity by being employed. That would probably disqualify you from any legal work visa at that time.

Get a lawyer or wait till you are legal to enter.

All you are doing here is making yourself look extremely suspect in your actions. Hmmm......wonder if the UK authorities would be interested in this thread?

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.

You are quite right; I missed that, sorry.

Then the position is clear: The OP cannot travel to the UK on the basis of his wife's ancestry unless she travels with him.

Therefore, it's equally clear that he is trying to sneak in illegally. It's his wife who has an ancestry visa, not him. He only has a visa as a dependent of his wife's.

My understanding is that a person living in the UK on the basis of being a spouse/partner of a holder of a UK Ancestry Visa is entitled to work. (Note, though, that the granting of the visa in the first place – to the main visa holder – is dependent either on that person intending to seek and take employment, or on that person having a job to go to.)

I am not sure, however, of the need to travel with the main visa holder. Certainly that is not the case once everyone has arrived (i.e. the spouse can travel abroad and return to the UK without the need for the main visa holder being present with him or her on the trip). This may be true as well for the first entry – I don't know – but if it is there might be need for proof to be shown that the main visa holder will be travelling to the UK forthwith. Certainly the subsidiary visa holders can enter for the first time after the holder of the main visa (which is a very different thing, of course). The best way for the OP to clarify this would be to check with the British High Commission in South Africa, or to seek the advice of a competent lawyer who knows about British immigration matters (and there must be some in South Africa). What does the visa in your passport actually say?

Also to the OP: there is no point in trying to "sneak" into the UK via Ireland or via some regional British airport. If you have the right to do what you propose to do – which you need to clarify one way or the other – then there is no need to. If you do not have that right, then the Irish will be on to it (they, after all, will see the visa in your passport, and moreover they are very alert now to people trying to use Ireland as a "convenient" way to enter the UK), as will the immigration officers at any British airport.

Good luck with finding out what you need to.

I think that in relation to first entry, the spouse must either accompany the principal visa holder or travel after the principal visa holder has already been admitted to the UK. This is because of paragraph 194(i) of the Immigration Rules, which requires that "the applicant is married to or a civil partner of a person with limited leave to enter in the United Kingdom under paragraphs 128-193". As the principal visa holder will not have leave to enter until they arrive in the UK and are admitted, it follows that the spouse cannot travel to the UK before the principal visa holder if they wish to be admitted in this category.

Good point. That would have been the case, certainly, but now a visa is taken as granting leave to enter, which is confirmed (rather than granted) by the immigration officer at the port of entry – and of course entry can be denied at the port of entry, thereby in effect cancelling the leave. (This change was introduced partly as a time-saving device to try to avoid the routine need for long immigration interviews at airports; whether it has succeeded in achieving that aim must be doubtful, but that's a different point.)

Whether, however, this definition of "leave to enter" is accepted in terms of the entry of a spouse or partner of the visa holder, I don't know. It may well not be – but as just about everyone has said, the OP needs to find this out before his departure for the UK, rather than just hoping for the best or trying to sneak in through Ireland or a minor British airport!

But Article 4(2) of the Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) Order 2000 says:-As I read it, that means that the visa does not operate as leave to enter until the visa holder arrives in the UK. At that point (but not before), they are treated as if they had been granted LTE before arrival. Or, in other words, these provisions do not mean that the visa holder already has LTE before they arrive in the UK.

Usual disclaimers about all this: Just personal musings, does not constitute formal advice, do not rely on my pre-coffee ramblings.

No, but your musings sound good, even pre-coffee. And I think you're right. If so, it would mean that the OP cannot enter the UK, as the holder of the spousal visa, in advance of his wife, the principal visa holder. And that certainly makes intuitive sense, I suppose.

In any case, the OP appears to have left us...

Simple answer here from experience of having to refer a similar case to UKBA.

Any derivative status for a dependent or family member is conditional upon the maintenance of the status by the principal status holder. The derivative status is not actually considered to be held until the principal status holder actually holds the status.

Of course, there may be subtleties in your case that are different but the interpretation by UKBA is likely to be consistent.