Hi all, I've browsed a few threads in here and you guys seem to be a minefield of information that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office seem determined not to give out.

I am looking to bring my fiancee, a Chinese national, to the UK as soon as possible, whereafter we hope to marry, settle down, put up with this miserable nation until my career has advanced sufficiently for us to leave. We met while I was working in China about a year ago, have maintained full contact since and I have been lucky enough to visit several times since my initial departure at the end of my job there. I'm a UK citizen, by the way - forgot to mention before the edit.

We had previously tried to apply for a tourist visa so that my fiancee could visit for a few months, which was dismissed out of hand - partly because I forgot to translate some documentation into English, and partly because my fiancee is not rich. I think my pocket-change exceeds her net worth.

It is my preference that my fiancee comes to England as a fiancee, since she has never been here before and it's unfair to ask somebody to settle in a new land unless they've had a chance to make a fair decision themselves.

I have been trying, with little success, to get straight answers out of the FCO:

1) Documentary proof of relationship:

I have a large amount of proof of continued contact, however, it is ALL computer-based. We communicate through MSN messenger, with voice and video, all of which is logged. As it is computer-based, does this suffer the same distrust as photocopy documents?

Similarly, we speak every morning on the phone. For this, I use Skype internet telephony - they keep accurate records of my calls, but again, it's computer-based.

I have a less thorough record of text messages and phone calls made through conventional means.

Will I have to get print outs of all of this notarised, to lend credence to the documents?

2) Household status

At the present time I'm looking to buy a house, so I anticipate I will move in about 2 or 3 months, however we both wish to have the application in as soon as humanly possible. At the present time I share a house with two colleagues - all of us are named on the housing contract. So far as I understand, our house-share forms a single "household", so this is an acceptable arrangement for a fiancee visa, however the call centre operative I spoke to minced their words on this somewhat. Would I do better to wait until I have a house to submit the application?

In terms of supplying the housing contract, I am unwilling to supply the original. Would a copy be acceptable, and is it necessary to have such a copy notarised as a true and accurate copy?

3) Ugly rumour

A colleague of mine, also with a Chinese girlfriend, recently stumbled across an article on a news site suggesting that in order for a fiancee visa to be granted, I have to apply for a permit to marry from the home office, whereby they decide first that this is not a sham marriage, the certificate of which I send to my fiancee to back her application. Is this true? If so, where can I find information on this?

4) Money

My fiancee is not rich at all. She's comfortably-off in her home town, but not in a position to lay down vast savings or whatever. I am not wealthy either, but have an income of a shade under £25k per year with no significant debts, modest savings and equity for the deposit on a house. In short, we'll be comfortably off here, and can afford dental and (via my job) private healthcare, though I won't be putting the cash down for a Mercedes any time soon.

Does my fiancee's lack of financial acumen harm her application?

5) Jumping the gun

So what would be the likelihood of my fiancee getting a spouse's visa were we to grow impatient and marry in China in a few months, given that my status will be little changed, or slightly changed but with house?


Thanks for reading this, er, very long post. I hope you can help.

Best regards,

 

This is if both applicants are not British or EU citizens, then? As a British citizen by birth, supplying British passport and British birth certificate, do I still have to apply for a COA?

Pictures I can produce, however written letters and cards are not available. We really do only have computer-based communications methods to provide. What's not clear is how to validate these so that they become acceptable, or whether any validation is necessary.

Many thanks for your help and best wishes.

Best regards,

 

There is probably a degree of over-caution in this. My work requires me to nit-pick over details:

Problem 1: people here speak of providing letters and greetings cards as proof of relationship. I do not have paper evidence like this. I have computer instant messenger conversations. Do I have to do anything to prove that these are genuine, or are they treated as equal to letters? Similarly for other electronic documents - is there any inherent mistrust in computer-issued documents?

Problem 2: the statement "in accommodation which they own or occupy exclusively" - I presently do not occupy the property exclusively. I occupy the property in cooperation with two colleagues, also named on the contract.

Problem 3: another thread on this board stated "all documents must be original". Fine, except for the housing contract and birth certificate, for which I wish to supply copies.

Am I being over-cautious? I would like this to be a simple rubber-stamp application, not a mass of rejections, appeals and reapplications.

Triple H: why would you favour first marrying, then applying for a visa?

rhea: many thanks for the clarification.

 

Ah, very true. A little help with the mortgage would be kinda nice

As to my documentation queries, any real problem there, or am I blowing smoke?

Just a random extra thing... once we're over here, married and have her 2 year leave to remain sorted out, is my fiancee free to come and go in England as she pleases?

We would like to visit my own family (in Germany) as well as take trips back to China from time to time.

 

For some reason I didn't get the "reply notification" to this. No, I'm not a dual-national, and my parents still hold their British passports. I do have native-born German family who would be happy to help, though.

Anyway, things are moving along somewhat:-

* My plans to buy a house are no longer just plans. I'm currently drowning in paperwork having put an offer on a place.
* Another couple of weeks should see me in possession of a certificate of no impediment to marriage.
* Air tickets are booked.

So... with that certificate, assuming the remarkably impatient and stuffy registrar hasn't made any errors in my fiancée's address that I didn't spot on checking, then I have to go through the irritation of getting everything stamped by two sets of governments in the UK.

Can anyone point me to a good service for doing this? Or do I have to show up in person?

 

OK ladies and gentlemen, since Triple H has linked through to this thread, I'll post an update. My wife and I married in China at the end of March. Shortly thereafter we applied for a visa. Now last Friday, the Embassy in Shanghai phoned my wife to ask her to give a date on which she intended to arrive in the UK, which she duly did, and was informed that a visa could be issued.

We'll now for certain in about 14 hours, but it looks very much like she's been granted a settlement visa. Obviously, I won't be cracking open the champagne until she has that passport in her hand with a visa stuck into it.

So here's the long and short of it:

In the UK I had to go to my local registry office and declare under the Marriage with Foreigners Act 1906 that I wished to marry. I had to give her name, her age, her occupation and her full address in pinyin.

Now two things to be careful of here:
* age: remember that the Chinese count ages from 1, not 0, so best to give her date of birth as shown on her name card. Remember, name card d.o.b. not real one: a lot of people have the wrong birthday shown on their ID documents
* address: check, check and double check this, because the registrar won't understand, and will tend to skip words. In addition, the one at my local registry office was a stroppy little cow.

You must wait 21 clear days before being issued with a Certificate of No Impediment to Marry.

Now once that's done it needs authentication at the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and then by the Chinese Embassy in the UK. Now, I couldn't be bothered to go myself, so I had the staff at the Oriental Travel Company in London do it. They had sorted out all my tourist visas for me before and were remarkably efficient about getting all this done, though not cheap. If the mods don't mind the link, they're here.

That takes between 10 and 15 working days including postage. If you don't do this in the UK, then it is possible to get the authentication performed by the Consulate in Shanghai or Embassy in Beijing, but I don't know how long that takes.

Now, while you're waiting for your certificates, have your fiancée phone the local marriage office in her Province to find out what further requirements there are. In some Provinces, they require you to translate your certificate in advance, at an approved translation agency.

In Jiangsu province, you will most likely have to marry in Nanjing. They have a dedicated office for marriage with foreigners. No appointment is necessary, simply turn up: open from 9 'til 4 with a lunch break between 1 and 2. You do not have to translate your papers in advance, their registrars read English and can verify the certificates directly.

You will need: your passport, your CNI, some money. It takes about an hour to marry - your fiancée must fill out about 2 forms, you get a photo taken together (don't turn up in jeans and t-shirts like we did), and after a while they bill you for 14RMB and give you two little red books. As soon as you lay your hands on those books, you're married. After that they send you over to another desk, your fiancée fills in two more forms and they pull your CNI apart. This is for the translation of your documents. It costs 300RMB

The next working day they will issue you with two notarised translations in English of your wedding certificate.

OK, congratulations, at this point you're married. Now for the visa:

Visa Recipe (serves 1)

British citizen provides:
1 application form
1 notarised copy of your passport
1 notarised copy of your birth certificate OR your original birth certificate
1 P60, unless you apply at the end of the fiscal year.
6 consecutive payslips
6 months bank statements
6 months statements of any savings/bonds/ISAs you have
1 copy of your land registry deed (homeowners) or 1 original copy of your tenancy agreement (tenants)
(optional - 6 months utility bills/council tax bills)
1 letter, detailing your relationship, how and where you met, your financial status, your future plans and aspirations and what you plan to have your wife do when she's in the UK.
1 copy of all correspondence you have ever had with her, so a full printout of your MSN logs, phone bills showing SMS and telephone calls, Skype call logs, etc. My proof ran to 700 pages, double-sided.
Photographs.
Money. About 4500RMB

Chinese citizen provides:
1 Passport
1 Photograph
1 of your little red books
1 of the notarised translations you collected the following day
1 Household Register book, with translations (you can do this yourself)
6 months bank statements (hers) with translations (you can do this yourself)
Any phone bills, pictures etc to back yours up.

Apply either at the Embassy in Beijing, the Consulate in Shanghai or at your local visa application centre. We applied at the visa application centre.

Leave to cook for one calendar month, serve on a bed of spaghetti. Recommended wine: Great Wall '99.

EDIT:: It should be noted that this was written for a person who actually met their fiancée initially whilst in China with a relationship that grew from there. I have no idea what additional info you need to provide if you met over the internet.

 

I have reply notifications turned on with this topic, so I get an email any time somebody posts

What's up?

 

OK the Household Register is the hu kou bu or 户口簿 (you will need Chinese language support to see the characters). I'm pretty sure all households have this, since it's one of the ways they determine who is a bona fide city resident and who's a migrant from the countryside.

If you give me a couple of days I can upload an Excel file which is the translated template of the file. I'm without internet at home at the moment.

 

If I can't then PM me an email address

 

Hi KingKid.

I'm a little confused by your post, there - your friend is a foreign national resident in the UK, yes? What's your friend's nationality? The reason I ask is that the procedure is a little bit different for foreign nationals, and the proofs asked of them may be somewhat different.

I only ask because you mention the Green Card, which is an invention of the USA and has no part in British immigration.