Returning to the UK

[Tim_MaA_MidB]

I am going to return to the UK with my Brazilian fiancee because I need to sort out various bits of paperwork in order to return to Brazil in the future. Hopefully we will be able to get married in the UK and she will be able to stay for longer than 6 months. If not, we will return in 6 months.

It will be a good chance for her to learn a little English and little about a different culture and to meet the family. I hope she can tolerate the weather!

If we can stay for longer I am going to complete my PGCE and become a science teacher, so if anyone knows of any vacancies I should be back in the UK before the end of August.

I want to show her around C.H. at some point. Anyone know any good B&Bs?

Also, has anyone had the experience of going through immigration?

[CHAZ]

www.tes.co.uk

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Also, has anyone had the experience of going through immigration?

At the airport counter, or the process of applying for residency?

I travel on an Australian passport and get the third degree at Heathrow when stating that I'm visiting family, so last trip I said that I was on business and got the third degree on which businesses I would be visiting. Started stuttering and stammering (jet lag and totally unprepared for the question) and thought that I was going to be hauled off to an interrogation room.

Most irritating is when you are travelling with someone who has or doesn't have an EC passport and you don't or do. Different queues, very different processing times. A friend tells me that she loves it, as she gets to hit Duty Free without the attempted control of her husband.

Good luck.

[matthew]

Good luck with that.

Larissa went through the whole immigration thing a few years back, so I had to learn about it then. At the time, it was fairly straightforward. The simplicity and humanity of it all made me proud to be British.

It's changed since then, of course. You've got the Daily Mail to thank for that, along with a government that'll pander even when there's nothing to pander to. It's all rather upsetting.

It's a while since I looked at any of this in detail, but off the top of my head...

• It's no longer possible to show up as a visitor and then apply to stay on the basis of marriage. If your fiancée plans to settle in the UK, she'll need to obtain a visa before travelling, even if she wouldn't normally need one to visit.
• There's a special procedure for giving notice of marriage where a foreigner wants to marry in the UK. I'm not wholly sure how that works, but the GRO would be a good place to start finding out.
• There are new fees for things you never even knew existed.

She might be able to avoid the visa requirements (and fees!) if she's only visiting the UK. That means she intends to leave within six months and won't be working. Showing up with no visa and no clear plans to return home is not a good idea.

[Ajarn Philip]

I travel on an Australian passport and get the third degree at Heathrow when stating that I'm visiting family, so last trip I said that I was on business and got the third degree on which businesses I would be visiting. Started stuttering and stammering (jet lag and totally unprepared for the question) and thought that I was going to be hauled off to an interrogation room.

But if you were born in the UK and now have an Aussie passport, you're still effectively a British national, as far as immigration are concerned ('patriality', I think it used to be called, or maybe 'exempt from control'), n'est-ce pas? Or have things changed that much?

[CHAZ]

[I want to show her around C.H. at some point. Anyone know any good B&Bs?

Also, has anyone had the experience of going through immigration?[/quote]


Sorry Tim, I forgot to add this to the Tes link:

www.thebandbdirectory.co.uk

Good trip back to Blightey...

[Angela Woodford]

[quote=Tim

I want to show her around C.H. at some point. [/quote]

This suddenly reminded me that I did a flying visit to Hertford with my first fiancé - must have been 1977. I'd forgotten all about it! It was not a rewarding experience. We left, as he was shaking his head and saying "I don't understand you. You're talking in a whole new loony language".

Hard to explain to a "normal" person!

[Katharine]

My friend's son married an Argentinian and they went through all sorts of hoops and were detained at Heathrow once, Dafydd Wigley our then MP sorted that out at a high level. I don't know all the details but my advice would be to get everything you can in both languages and to seek advice at the highest level.

Good Luck!

[icomefromalanddownunder]

But if you were born in the UK and now have an Aussie passport, you're still effectively a British national, as far as immigration are concerned ('patriality', I think it used to be called, or maybe 'exempt from control'), n'est-ce pas? Or have things changed that much?

I can purchase a stamp or something that effectively makes my passport bi - er- national? However, I tend to think about doing it close to any trip that I make, and don't leave enough time to actually get one (no Embassy here, and the last I heard was that people were having to actually travel to Melbourne to obtain visas, rather than organising them via the postal system). Last trip was a cause of some hyperventilation, as I inadvertently washed my passport. Tried to speak to someone at the Passport Office and get them to check that the microchip or whatever was still readable, but mere mortals (aka Australian citizens) are no longer permitted to converse with Passport Officers. We turn up at a Post Office with all necessary documentation and have to deal with someone who lives in fear of making a mistake while processing the application, as any errors result in a hefty fine. My laundered passport was not accepted as proof of identity, even though the id stuff that had been imprinted in it was perfectly legible, so frantically contact daughter and reclaim citizenship certificate (Please Jess, don't say that you don't know where you put it), return to PO to be told repeatedly that it is highly unlikely that my new passport will arrive in time for me to travel.

WRONG ))))))))

xx

[Ajarn Philip]

I suppose it depends how often you're likely to be travelling to the UK. You won't have a problem under any circumstances, but I'm surprised you get asked anything at all. I used to work in immigration, and as far as I was concerned, anyone with an 'Old Commonwealth' passport who was born in the UK was British, whether they wanted to be or not! (With or without a stamp.) Mind you, as far as working 'on the desk' is concerned, I'm going back 20 years and more. I suspect things have changed a bit since then. Not so much discretion or common sense.

I remember (oh God, here we go...) an officer on the outward control at Dover in a very quiet period between Christmas and New Year. Must have been about 1980. Boring as Hell, middle of the night, so he took an Emu glove puppet along to amuse any kids he might see. Much to his delight, Mum, Dad and 3 kids turn up in a car, and out of the car window appears Kermit the Frog (on Mum's hand) with passports in mouth. Emu then leaps out of the window and starts strangling Kermit. Mum screams, Dad roars with laughter and the kids shriek with delight. They had an hour before the boat left, so they all went in to the kiosk and handed round a bottle of scotch (well, not the kids of course).

He'd probably be sacked on the spot if that happened today.

Please don't get me started - there are loads more where that came from. And then JR will start telling police stories!

[J.R.]

I am going to return to the UK with my Brazilian fiancee because I need to sort out various bits of paperwork in order to return to Brazil in the future. Hopefully we will be able to get married in the UK and she will be able to stay for longer than 6 months. If not, we will return in 6 months.

It will be a good chance for her to learn a little English and little about a different culture and to meet the family. I hope she can tolerate the weather!

If we can stay for longer I am going to complete my PGCE and become a science teacher, so if anyone knows of any vacancies I should be back in the UK before the end of August.

I want to show her around C.H. at some point. Anyone know any good B&Bs?

Also, has anyone had the experience of going through immigration?

Pretend your Polish or Romanian. Welcomed with open arms.

[matthew]

I can purchase a stamp or something that effectively makes my passport bi - er- national? However, I tend to think about doing it close to any trip that I make, and don't leave enough time to actually get one (no Embassy here, and the last I heard was that people were having to actually travel to Melbourne to obtain visas, rather than organising them via the postal system).

Probably a Right of Abode stamp. If you're British, you could apply for a British passport instead. You'd then use your British passport to enter the UK and the Australian one to enter Australia.

[icomefromalanddownunder]

Probably a Right of Abode stamp. If you're British, you could apply for a British passport instead. You'd then use your British passport to enter the UK and the Australian one to enter Australia.

Actually I have triple nationality (NZ too - meant that we didn't have to apply to migrate from NZ to Oz: just walked in), but I prefer to travel with only one passport for three reasons:

1) I have a habit of laundering passports, and it's expensive enough to replace one, let alone multiples

2) Missing exit and entry visas have been known to give Oz Immigration an opportunity to give people a bit of bovva

3) My life is too short to expend much energy keeping track of things like passports and spectacles. Hence, although multifocal glasses make me feel seasick, I wear them in preference to having to keep track of more than one pair (that lives on the end of my nose and is, therefore, relatively easy to find), and one passport is more than enough for me to worry about .

xx

[Ajarn Philip]

Right of Abode - thanks, Matthew - that's the one! Getting old... memory failing... <sigh>

[jhopgood]

Things have changed quite a bit since the wife and I went through these hoops. We got married in the UK in 1973 with the wife (Costa Rican) having been in the country 5 days. She then got a letter giving her right of abode based on the marriage. I forget how long it was for because we left the country 4 months later and have never lived there for more than one month since. She got a British passport in 1984 and has traveled on that ever since.
Having had to get residency in 7 countries I know that there is always a way through bureaucracy which means having umpteen copies of birth certificates, marriage certificates, all translated and notarised with consular stamps etc, but patience and a sense of humour will get you there in the end.
What I felt was vastly more important was my wife's, or in you case, fiancee's, ability to adapt to the UK. Latin American life is pretty different to the UK and takes some getting used to. I am now used to saying "Good Morning" to anyone with me in a lift, (Yes, even in stores), but it is not the norm in the UK. My wife can't go out in the snow because she puts so many clothes on she can hardly move. The list goes on.
And you can't get a feel in under 3 months, which is when Culture Shock will first start rearing it's head.
My suggestion would be to let her get used to the place first before you get deeply involved in the paperwork.
BTW, my son just got married in London to a French girl from Guadaloupe, and apart from the marriage course they had to take from the RC church, he seemed to need far more papers than we did.

Good luck.