Hi I am french national and my partner south korean national. I posted a while ago about UK fiancee visa. We are about to send the application and we are thinking about the next step when she will be in the UK. So my plan is to get married so that we get the marriage certificate. Then apply for the EEA2 for the residence card asap for my spouse. In the meantime apply for the EEA family permit as it will give right to my spouse to get a job in the UK without having to wait for the EEA2 residence card as it could take up to 6 months.

Having searched in the forum from top to bottom, I havent found answers to my questions so here there are:

1. Do we have to submit eea1 and eea2 although i already have applied for eea1 and received my registration certificate from home office? Could we just send EEA2? I heard that it would be faster to apply together with EEA1 but is that necessary knowing that I already did it?

2.From different sources, it is clear that it is not possible to get a family permit from within the UK. So the family permit must be obtained from outside the UK. Ideally, we would like to apply for the family permit in France but it seems that the family permit must be obtained from where the non eea national lives which in our case is south korea. So it is very very annoying if it has to be done in south korea, coz it means that she comes in the uk to get married, then she must go back to her country to apply for a family permit and come back again to the uk. Waste of time and money. Very silly.

According to the text below, there is requirement for getting the EEA family permit:

"If your family member is not lawfully resident in an EEA member state (including family members applying from non-EEA countries), we will refuse them an EEA family permit if they cannot also satisfy the requirements in the Immigration Rules for leave to enter the UK."

"They can apply for the EEA Family Permit at any British mission overseas that offers a full service visa-issuing office. If they are applying for an EEA family permit from within the EEA, they will need to show that they are lawfully resident in an EEA member state.

If they are applying for an EEA family permit from outside the EEA (and are not lawfully resident in an EEA member state), they will also need to meet the requirements in the Immigration Rules for leave to enter the UK. "

I would like to know the meaning of being lawfully resident in an EEA member state? I heard that some people just need to come to any european country on a tourist visa to get the status of lawful resident in the EU. Is that true? Are there people who did that?

It does seem possible according to the text i found on http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk/servlet/Front ... 6679156328

"# Following the case of Akrich, which established that a right of movement for a family member is only derived if they are lawfully resident in an EEA member state, the requirement for an applicant to demonstrate lawful residence has been introduced into the EEA Regulations. Anyone who has a valid visa or entry clearance, and who is abiding by the conditions of that entry clearance, can be considered to be lawfully resident in that Member State. This would normally be in the form of the local equivalent of leave to enter / remain as a family member of a national of the member state in which they are residing. Or, alternatively, an EEA residence card would normally be held if they are the family members of an EEA national residing in a member state of which they are not a national.
# The non-EEA national could equally have entered the country in some other category (visitor, student etc) and would still be considered as lawfully resident in that Member State. For example, an Indian national married to a French national, who had obtained a visa to enter France as either the spouse of the French national or in some other category (as a visitor, student or work permit holder etc), would be considered 'lawfully resident' in France, if, at the time of application, they were abiding fully by the conditions of that visa.
# Those with valid Schengen visas would be considered lawfully resident in all Schengen states. If there are cases where you are not sure if an applicant can be considered as lawfully resident, please refer the details to ECO Support."

I would just need some people to confirm that it is true and possible and have done the same thing. Also the link above says that priority must be given to family permit application but no guarantee is given on issuing them on the same day. Have anyone tried getting a family permit from France, and how long did it take?

I take this opportunity to thank all the people on the forum who provide info on immigration issue coz it is real headache.

Cheers,

Fred

 

Huummm, can u tell me the link which says that the spouse must be legally living in a EEA member state.

The link http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk/servlet/Front ... 8721068382

which has a date on it is from 13/07/07 so it is fairly recent and it does say on this link that the spouse must be a lawfully resident in a EEA member state.

Fred

 

Well, everything is going well!!!

We had the fiancee Visa in 3 days. Upon submitting the application, the embassy said we enclosed too many document and evidences. But they also said the more the better, so that's we did. Put in as much as possible. I would swear that the application was weighting about 5 kilo!

The conclusion from this is to put as much evidence as you can, anything that relate to your relationship. It will help for sure.

Now the next step now is the EEA2. But that should be easier than the fiancee visa as I already got my registration certificate EEA1 approved.
But I am wondering if if it is worth to send again the document they asked for the EEA1 coz the documents will be exactly the same.

A happy man