Refugee Spouse Visa In Uk

How to obtain a spouse visa for UK for refugee in UK? The spouse visa UK can be the beginning of a new life from your current state. There will be no hassle of searching the best lawyer in the market. 

A Refugee spouse visa in Uk is the most common type of spousal visa for the UK, this visa will allow the applicant to enter and stay in the UK legally.

Applying for UK spouse visa can be time consuming and intricate, particularly when you are dependent on your spouse to sponsor you and you require a certificate of sponsorship from their employer. The partner and marriage visa can be applied for by either the husband or wife and if successful, the family unit is given leave to remain in the UK for a period of 5 years.

This year, the UK is set to accept only 20,000 new spouses as part of its immigration policy. Given this is far less than before, there are many couples who will not be able to reunite with each other. One of them could, however, be you.

Refugee Spouse Visa In Uk

This page looks at the immigration rules around bringing an adult family member to live with you in the UK.

Read this page for information about marriage (spouse) visas. You will find about “the minimum income requirement” for spouse/marriage visas ,and what you can do if you don’t meet those requirements. You will find out about the rules you need to meet if you want to bring a parent to the UK.

This page has information about the evidence you will need to provide to be successful in your application. Read this page to find out about the application process for bringing a family member to the UK and the fees you will need to pay. Find out what happens if you are successful in your application and when you can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR). Read this page to find out what you can do if your application is refused.

This page does not look at applying for the right to remain in the UK on the basis of children in the UK – for information on that, see our page on If You Have Children.

If you are an EEA national and you are in the UK before 31 December 2020, your close family may be able to apply under the EU Settled Status scheme. See our EEA nationals page.

If you have Refugee Status or Humanitarian Protection, you may be able to apply to bring your partner/spouse and any children you have to the UK, as long as they were part of your family unit at the time you fled your country of origin. This is known as “refugee family reunion“. This page does not have information about refugee family reunion. You can find more information on the Home Office website here. There is a good guide to understanding refugee family reunion on the Free Movement website, which you can access here.

Spouse/marriage visa

If you are a British citizen have Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in the UK and you wish to apply for your spouse, civil partner or unmarried partner to come and live with you, you will in most circumstances have to meet income or savings criteria.

You may also have to meet these criteria if you have Refugee Status or Humanitarian Protection and you do not meet the criteria for refugee family reunion (see above).

In these types of applications, the person with British citizenship, ILR etc may be referred to as the “sponsor”. On this page, we refer to that person as “you”. The person without that citizenship/immigration status is referred to as “your partner”.

To meet the income/saving criteria, you need to be earning a minimum (before tax) of £18,600 per year or equivalent in cash savings.

If you are applying to bring – in addition to your partner – a child under the age of 18 who does not already have Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK or British citizenship, the income requirement increases to £22,400 for your partner and one child, and then an additional £2,400 for each further child.

The financial requirements are even more complicated if you are self-employed, or if you cannot meet the threshold through earnings alone.

There are temporary changes to the minimum income and adequate maintenance requirement because of Covid-19. Read more on our Covid-19 updates page here.

The Free Movement website have produced a useful diagram to help explain the income/savings rules. You can see it here.

There are some circumstances in which your partner can be granted leave to remain even if you do not meet the income requirements.

If you are in receipt of certain welfare benefits, such as Disability Living Allowance or Carer’s Allowance, you may not need to meet the income requirements.

The Home Office also need to consider whether a refusal of your application because you do not meet the requirements would have “unjustifiably harsh consequences” for you and your family. This will be particularly relevant if you have children.

Partners: right to family life

If you cannot meet the income requirements, it is possible to apply for the right to remain (or to enter) the UK on the basis of your right to family and private life in the UK. Read more about this on our page on Human Rights.

The Home Office refuse most human rights-based applications, but you may have the right to appeal a refusal at the First-tier Tribunal.

The Home Office (and then a judge, if you are appealing a refusal) will consider whether you and your partner meet the immigration rules for these types of applications. If they do not meet the criteria of the immigration rules, the Home Office/judge should then consider your application outside of the rules and decide if exceptional circumstances apply that mean your partner should be given the right to enter/stay.

The immigration rules allow your to apply for the right to remain on the basis of family life, if:

• there is a “genuine and subsisting relationship”
• with a partner who is in the UK and they are a British citizen, or have Indefinite Leave to Remain, or Refugee Status or Humanitarian Protection
• and there are insurmountable obstacles to your family life (with your partner) continuing outside of the UK.

You need to provide evidence that your relationship is genuine. The Home Office may invite you and your partner to attend an interview to assess this. They are unlikely to refer to it, to you, in language that makes it obvious that the interview is about testing the “genuineness” of your relationship. They might just refer to it as a “marriage interview” or “relationship interview”. Both of you in the relationship must attend this interview if you are both in the UK.

A subsisting relationship means a relationship that currently exists. See below for information on how to prove this.

A partner is someone you are engaged to, married to, in a civil partnership with, or someone you have lived with in a relationship like marriage for at least two years.

The meaning of “insurmountable obstacles” has been the subject of legal debate. If you have a lawyer, they will need to show that the reasons you couldn’t live outside of the UK amount to insurmountable obstacles. If you are making the application without a lawyer, concentrate on showing why it would not be reasonable for you to live with your partner outside of the UK, and provide evidence for this.

ACTION SECTION

Think about the evidence you need to gather to prove your relationship meets the criteria above.

You need to show evidence that your relationship is genuine, long-term, and ongoing.

If you live with your partner, you should provide evidence of this. This might include documents about your mortgage if you own the place where you live, or a joint tenancy agreement or letter from your landlord confirming you both pay the rent, if you are a renter.

If you don’t live together, what evidence do you have of joint financial responsibilities? This might include a joint bank account or utility bills with both your names on. Remember you will need to have been living together if you aren’t married, in a civil partnership or engaged.

Can you show evidence of visiting each other’s families? If this was outside the UK, you can provide travel tickets to prove your visit.

You may want to provide photographs that document your relationship, including meeting each other’s families. You also might want to provide statements from friends and families about your relationship. Official documents are treated most seriously by the Home Office/the courts, but these are not always available or enough. You might even want to show records of your communication with your partner via email, messaging and social media – but as these are personal communications, think carefully about whether it’s necessary to include these.

Remember you need to show that there are insurmountable obstacles to you living in another country – how can you prove this? Are there family, work, health or care reasons that mean you or your partner have to be in the UK? You will need official letters, documents and statements to prove these.