I am a US citizen and my husband is British. I just received an email saying that I was approved for a UK settlement visa and thought I would share my experience for everyone else who might need this information.

We met while studying abroad in Germany in 2004. We were married October 2006. From then until now we have traveled back and forth every couple of months. We have a two year old and I am also pregnant with our second child.

In our application we included:

1. online application

2. Biometric confirmation sheet, including the stamp that USCIS puts on it
(YOU NEED TO KEEP THE BIOMETRIC CONFIRMATION SHEET, it doesn't state this on britainusa.com, but says so on the confirmation sheet and also says that you must send it in with the visa application, you must also print this out to take the appointment to get your finger prints done or they won't let you in, you also have to take your passport to the biometric appointment)

3. My american passport

4.His british passport

5.Our marriage license (we were married in South Carolina, USA)

6.The tenancy agreement for our apartment in London (both of our names are on our lease)

7.Letter of support, which we made like a cover letter stating my husband's support of my application, his intention that we live together, and stating our university degrees and experience and my intention to work in the UK

8. Proof of relationship- I included two pictures of us together with our son, one email from me to him from last year, a card that he sent me after we were married and our son's birth certificate. I also put sticky notes sticking out of our passports showing the stamps of our visits to each other.

9. Proof of financial support- My husband had quit his job two weeks before we applied and had not found another job yet. So we put in
-My resume
-his resume
-my university transcript from an american university
-a letter from his university saying that he had a degree
- his pay stubs from the past eight months of him working
-one online job advertisement that I was qualified for
-a letter from a recruiter saying that he could find my husband a higher paying job with longevity
-one online job advertisement that my husband was qualified for
-a budget I made in Excel which included our rent, basic utilities, food and travel.
-two bills from EDF and Thames water stating how much we paid monthly ( this was to go along with the budget sheet)
-a copy of my bank accounts which had only $700
- a copy of my husband's british account which had 400GBP, however his last paycheck had not yet been deposited because of some computer error, we had the pay stub but the money wasn't in the account, so I put a sticky note on the last pay stub saying it hadn't been deposited yet and stuck it with the bank statement. So with the paycheck we would have had 1100 GBP in my husband's account.


I put all of this together in a notebook, with all the documents in their own page protector and separated into sections.

I sent my application to the NYC Consulate on Saturday January 5, 2008. I had it over-nighted and it arrived on Monday January 7 at 11:30 am. I checked this with the post office tracking service. I got an email at the end of business day Tuesday January 8 saying that my documents had arrived and they were being processed.

On Friday January 25 the embassy called me to ask me questions about my application. They wanted to know if my son would be entering the UK on his British passport ( he would as he is a dual citizen and has both an american and british passport), why my husband had left his job ( I said he wanted a shorter commute), and if I had looked into employment in the UK ( I said that I hadn't directly contacted places about work but had looked into my industry and that there was work available).
They called me at 9:30 and by noon they had sent me an email saying I was approved, the visa had been issued and gave me my tracking number.

In total from the time they sent me an email saying that they had received my documents until they issued the visa was 14 business days and 18 real days. I'm not including the day my application actually arrived at the embassy.

I had been "visiting" my husband for the past four months in England. We came back together to the USA for the holidays and had scheduled a flight to go back on the 16th of January. This was cutting it close we know, but since they said it only took 5 business days we thought we had enough time. Well, we didn't. We missed our flight and the embassy had my husband's passport so he couldn't leave.

He had to call and leave several messages at the Atlanta embassy (because they are responsible for passports for our region) and the NY embassy ( because that is where his passport was). It took four days for them to contact us, but this was only after my husband left a desperate message saying he was stranded here and needed help because they embassy wouldn't give him his passport back and that he needed to go home. We got a call back from the NY embassy and the woman said the ONLY reason she called back was because he had said he was British and had a passport emergency but that she didn't handle any visa enquiries and since his passport was at the visa office, officially he had a visa enquiry. But Thankfully she said she would call the visa section and have them call us back. They did, about an hour later, and said they would return his passport, which arrived the next day.

If by chance you need to call the embassy you have to leave a message wherever you can. You will never get in touch with a real person when you call, and their phone numbers are set up so that you can't get in touch with anyone, and it's hard to find a place to leave a message. Don't bother with emailing or calling the Worldbridge or Abtran people. They have no information and can't tell you who else to call. We knew they coudln't give us any information on the status of our application, so we only wanted to know who to get in touch with to get my husband's passport back and they couldn't help at all. Once you send it in, you are on your own. We left messages with consulate matters at the Atlanta consulate and in NY we pressed every option until we could find somewhere to leave a message. It takes a while to find this. However at the NY consulate if you press option 6 on the first menu and option 6 on the next menu, you can leave a message "for a member of staff".

Any way my husband went home on Monday and I got my email approval on Friday, yesterday.

As for income, my husband made 17,000 GBP at the job he just quit. He was in sales, so he had commission on top of this, but usually brought home between 1100-1600/month. I am a behavioral therapist for autistic children and provide in home early intervention. I design the entire educational and behavioral program. Not many people do this, so it's usually easy to find work. My husband and I both have Bachelor's degrees.

Hope is helps, and I think this is everything, i get responses to this post so, I'll be happy to answer any questions.

 

Yes it comes with the online application. When you finish the online application you can print your application, you can also print the biometric confirmation sheet. You can also go back and reprint these if you need to.

This is the sheet that tells you when your biometric appointment is and has information on it. You take this paper with you to your appointment with your passport. They will stamp it and initial it. You keep this paper and send it in with your application. If you don't have this document you can't get your fingerprints done and it's also considered part of your application, so your application would be incomplete. It tells you all of this on the confirmation sheet, but it doesn't say this on britainusa.com, as of yet.

When I finished my application I printed it but wasn't going to print the confirmation, I did a few days later which was a good idea because I would have missed out on all the information on the sheet.