I am an american married to an european national. My wife and I have an EEA residence permit from 3 years ago, and is still valid for two more years.

Owing to employment opportunities, we have been in the US the past 3 years. But I just got a job in the UK, so we are returning to the UK again. My wife does not yet have a job in the UK but will be looking for one. We can show from our bank statement that we do not need to recourse to public funds.

My questions are:

1. Can my wife and I simply use our existing EEA residence permit to enter the UK, even though she does not yet have a job in the UK, and we have been out of UK for the past 3 years?

2. Or, do we have to reapply for another EEA residence permit?

3. If 2, what do we do about the fact that my wife does not yet have a job lined up?

Thanks very much for any comments you may have on this matter.

 

Follow up post:

As far as I can tell, we should be ok for me to enter and work, because the two-year rule applies only if we want to have perminent residency.

So, the resident permit we have EEA1 should still be valid.

Is this correct?

 

Thanks Trippy for your response!

Just a follow up question: During the three years we have been in the US, I've been back to the UK several times for short visits. As my wife was living in the US at the time, I didn't use the Residence Permit, but obtained instead a short term visitor's visa. Will that affect my using the Residence Permit this time?

Thanks again for all your help. Really appreciate it.

 

Apologies: I meant to type 'Triple.'

 

As I understand the rules, if my wife was not invoking her Residency right at that time, then I should also not invoke that right, which was why I did not try to use the Residency Permit (she was with me in the US at the time).

But now, we will both be going back to the UK. It seems that I should be able to invoke the Residency Right.

Isn't this right?