Spouse Visa Refusals generally occur when the visa Officer finds any slight/minor detail on your visa application that according to them flunk to meet requirements. Often these details are hidden deep in your visa application and refer to a dubious paragraph in a set of laws that are immensely complex. It’s quite common for people to go through the basic criteria mentioned on the govt. website and use that as a kind of checklist. But that is the biggest blunder.
A “Spouse Visa” is required when a married couple – or Civil Partners desire to settle down together in the UK. It is mandatory that one of them, the “Sponsor” already holds a British Citizenship and obtained Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR), or is otherwise settled in the UK. It is also applicable if a couple lived in any another country and they aspire to come down to the UK: the British Citizenship holder would be the sponsor, and their partner would be the applicant.
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1> Financial situation
The financial requirement for a UK Spouse Visa depends on the sponsor, but not the applicant. The sponsoring partner required to show that they are financially capable to support their partner. Applicants’ earnings don’t matter until they have enough funds saved (unless they have a very substantial amount in savings) – it all lies with the sponsor. However, this is not the whole story. It won’t be sufficient to just say the sponsor earns, you will have to show evidence for this. For example, bank statements, P60, Tax Returns documents, and so on. The visa Officer has no intention of letting anyone off lightly, and if there is any delusion they will discover it.
2> English Language
The applicant will have to show his/her proficiency in English language and provide documentation to prove this. It isn’t sufficient to presume that the fact the applicant speaks English, even if they speak it very well, will be enough to satisfy the specified details for the Home Office. Everything comes down to proofs to meet the enumerated requirements in minute detail. Often a Spouse visa is denied because of this relatively straightforward step.
3> Evidence of Relationship
The major reason for visa refusal, if the application is unable to prove that the relationship is genuine, long-term relationship, the visa will be denied. The visa officer does not know applicants personally and it is the applicant’s duty to provide the proofs in support of their claim. For example, if the application said that the couple is married but other evidence obtained by the Home Office manifests that the couple actually has two separate residential addresses – they can easily obtain such information from tax records, Electoral Roll, and so on – then a spouse visa may be denied.
4> Spouse Visa Refusal: Appeals
Not every refused application will be given the right to appeal, and most of the time it is wiser for the applicant to register an entirely new application. A common misapprehension with appeals is that they provide you an opportunity to be “heard” again and put your case to the Home Office again. This might be true to an extent, but an appeal does not give you a chance to add new information, it is merely a chance to state that you believe there was an error made. As such, the same evidence you presented the first time will be viewed again. And it may take a very long time – perhaps twelve months, or even more.
It is often wiser to lodge a brand new application instead of submitting an appeal against a spouse visa refusal. However, it is necessary that the reasons for the denial are addressed directly in the second application or it will simply be refused again. Yes, that might sound very obvious, but there are applicants who keep applying over and over and failing to identify the specific areas.
