Help Request - Filipina Girlfriend UK Visa selection.

Hi all. My name is Peter and I am posting on behalf of a friend who may well join us here soon as I have suggested this to him. In the meantime, I am posting to find out a little regarding the correct visa for a Filipina to enter the UK as a girlfriend.

I am already married to a Filipina and we have already gone through this procedure back in 2004. That is too long ago to assist my friend of course as so much has changed. I went to the UK Gov website and was surprised not to see a "Fiance Visa" by title as there did used to be one. Instead I found the usual tourist visa and a "Marriage Visa". The tourist visa does not allow the Filipina to marry whilst in the UK. The marriage visa says you must leave the UK after you have married within the 6 months!? What am I missing here please?

My friend has met a Filipina here in Mindanao (my wife, our daughter and I have been living and working here for the last 4 years after living in the UK together for 6 years - she went through the whole process and became a British Citizen) and he wishes to get her into the UK for exactly the same reasons that I wanted to get my then girlfriend into the UK - to see if she was ok with my life there, to see if she was ok with the climate(!), to see if she could be happy living outside of the Philippines and to see if she could develop a good relationship with family and friends. They are not engaged nor do they wish to be at this moment and I fully relate to their situation at this point in the developing relationship.

My then girlfriend arrived in the UK on a Fiance visa which gave us 6 months to develop our relationship and get married. Which we did after about 5 months. We sought a right to remain in the UK for her as my wife and then all the other applications followed over the next few years. The fiance visa was certainly the right one for us then and, if it still exists, it would be the right one for my friends girlfriend too. It certainly did not require my wife to return to the Philippines!

What is the preferred visa application (by title or form number please) that will enable his girlfriend to make a visa application (i) where she is able to marry in the UK, if that is what they choose to do, and (ii) where she is NOT required to return to the Philippines after they are married. The system ten years ago seemed a lot easier! Many thanks, in anticipation of your assistance

Peter

First of all: welcome here, Peter, from another Philippines-based British expat who's been living here since 2007 and based in Davao with Mae and our two sons.

I am fairly certain that you have misread the Home Office's web site although, like all Government publications, clarity isn't a strong suit. There are two applicable visas, one for those who are already married and a fiancée visa - confusingly referred to as a marriage visa. It is the second that will be of interest and just as in your case, the applicant has to be married within six months or leave the country. There is NO requirement to leave the country after getting married!

No

Not much to misread here. 3rd bullet point. https://www.gov.uk/marriage-visa/overview

That is not the correct Visa - or at least it is not the fiancée Visa successfully applied for by several members here, most recently Anne and Timmers. The Marriage Visitor visa says it costs just £83 but the fiancée visa those two members received cost about £1000.

Having read that page, it does appear that one can assume that UKVI no longer issues visas that allow you to marry in the UK and then apply for further leave to remain (FLR(M)). Indeed the guidance notes specifically state that the so-called Marriage Visitor visa is not the correct visa to be applied for under such circumstances but, unhelpfully, does not give any indication of what the correct visa type is now called.

Hopefully someone who has recently applied will shed further light - but we'll have to wait a few hours for them to awaken.

You can still do the fiancee visa route. That is what we did.

https://www.gov.uk/join-family-in-uk/eligibility

a marriage visitor visa is just that--for visitors to come to UK to get married here---then return home. it is not the start of a settlement visa.

to come here as a fiancee--to then settle here--is a marriage visa--which costs £thousands over a 5 year period--and the sponsor--here--has to meet specific requirements.

there is no visa to bring in a girlfriend on a "try before you buy" basis------just a cheap tourist visa which is difficult to obtain---and CANNOT be switched to a marriage visa when here.

Welcome to British Filipino, Peter. It was very kind of you helping out your friend. You got great advise coming from those amazing 3 who just posted a while ago.

Yes, you are correct in saying that the type of visa which specifies a "Fiancé/Fiancée Visa" no longer exist in the option provided by the UKVI site.

It is in the category "Settlement" which will give you a drop down menu "Marriage". I agree with Sir bigmac that getting married/settling down in the UK is NOT a trial or error basis. One of the requirements for this is the intention of the couple to stay permanently/settle in the UK- one thing to point out in making a letter in the application process.

Anyway, we still refer this one as Fiancé/Fiancée visa because it is easier to explain.

Thanks for this Maharg but a prerequisite of this visa is that the couple must have been living together for at least two years! They only met just before Christmas. Are you suggesting this is the criteria for the "fiance visa" nowadays? If so, that prerequisite is wholly unreasonable as it dictates that in order to come to the UK and marry, you can not do this unless you have already been cohabitating for that period of time. I personally find that not only is the duration unacceptable but also the implication that you should be living with one another before getting married. Whilst some may consider this a good idea or even necessary, others may not so for a government to dictate this as a criteria in order to get married, it is ridiculous. I understand the need to prevent sham marriages but, IMHO, to prejudice so many genuine couples just to catch out the lesser false ones, this is wrong. Just wait until I am voted as world ruler. I will fix everything then

Thanks for this feedback Markham. Glad you see why I am posting about this now. So, the "Marriage Visa" is not the right visa for a couple to get married then. Pleanty of folk, me included years ago, continually refer to a Fiance Visa yet nobody can point me to it or send me a link to it. If this does not exists, I think folk should stop referring to it as it is rather pointless to do so when there is no such thing (anymore?). I really cannot recall if the visa my then girlfriend travelled on 10 years ago was title "Fiance Visa".

As for assuming anything, I tend not to do that. I favour establishing facts to avoid disappointment and/or egg on the face lol. So I will wait until someone who knows the facts can assist. Surely there is a couple here, a Filipina in the Philippines and a man in the UK who are both single, not been living together due to living in different nations and who, recently, decided to get together in the UK and consider marriage followed by residing there. If anyone reading this fits that description, please post a little visa information and, ideally, links to the right websites. Visa application form titles and/or reference numbers would also be super helpful.

I did look at the UKVI website together with a thread on this forum about its step by step use but as it required registration to go through it, I did not investigate that further. The explanitary post was not for a couple as described above so, again, I am unsure if it is tailored for such a couple. It makes perfect sense (to me only it seems rather than the UK government) to have information and a visa application process for the couple I described above who simply wish/need to get together on UK soil to establish if they can further their relationship.

But then, a government that understands true love, and is able to prescribe systems and processes to allow it to flourish, may not actually exist!

P

Hi Bigmac and thanks for the reply I will set aside the awful quote you included in your response as that is extremely offensive as there is absolutely nothing but love involved in the relationship and the related visa application that I am discussing here.

So is the marriage visa a little like a facility for foreigners to go to the UK marry and leave just like some English people do when they go to Florida or the Bahamas to marry on the beach maybe? Not sure a marriage in Yarmouth is my idea of a great day out but who knows how foreigners so it! lol.

Defining that as separate from a "settlement visa" is very helpful. I had not done that yet but I will view the correct visa needed as just that, maybe a settlement visa that allows marriage is available? You confuse me again by then referring to seemingly another "marriage visa" that deals with a fiance travelling to the UK, marrying and settling. I am not seeing ant such titled visa. Obviously, as I did all this years ago and established my wonderful wife as a British Citizen, I understand about expense and time....I doubt it is FIVE years now though is it? I sem to recall it was about 3 years to jump through all the hoops. However, I do not actually need all that explaining, just the visa, the CORRECT visa, for my friend to get his girl to Blighty and facilitate marriage if that is the route they wish to go along. It is really all about enabling a couple to progress their relationship in accordance with their desires and what they feel in theor hearts - but the UK government seem to think it is all about prescriptive criteria!

Before offering any service, any business or organisation (or government) should consider what the people they will be serving require. Typically, businesses, organizations (and governments) concern themselves with what they "think" they should provide and not what the people wish to receive. If service providers took five minutes to sit on the other side of the desk in the shoes of the "customer", there is no way that the current documentation would remain in place. It would be re-written and the entire process would work a gazillion times better. But nobody offering the services ever asks the customer what they want, we just get what we are given. It is all pants!

I understand the Filipina cannot marry on a tourist visa and that has always been the case since I became involved with visas.....and I am STILL involved with them (but with the boot on the other foot) as I am STILL trying to resolve my visa issues here in Phils after 4 years! It seems all governments are equally useless when you need help from them. But do not let me distract myself from the thread topic.....

What visa does my friends girlfriend need please?

P

Hello Anne,

Many thanks. You say I got great advice from the initial posters but yours is slightly more helpful to me so, thank you

You mention my kindness towards my friend. Any man who has such a happy and contented marriage would wish the same for his friends. For this reason alone I always promote investigating the prospect of having a Filipina wife to establish if they are suited to everything that involves and to establish if the Filipina concerned is suited to him! For me, being married to my specific, wonderful Filipina is a perfect fit and if today is like yesterday and tomorrow is like today, I will be wanting for nothing at all

So, am not going to find a "Fiance visa" by name. Ok. Got that. I will no longer use that term then as it is pointless. And others referring to it is only going to confuse those new to the provcess too so hopefully others will desist from using it too! You are the second person to mention a settlement visa so I am going to stick with that title for now and then try to narrow it down to an actual form title and reference number.

From the remainder of your post it does remind me of the application process my wife went through 10 years ago (letter of intent, me justifying the relationship and proving I can offer support without recourse to public funds etc etc. I am sure that most of the process will be similar but it is ONLY finding the right visa at the moment that I need to establish.

As I posted above, I have not registered on the UKVI website (I am not a Filipina trying to travel to the UK lol) but it seems that once my friends girlfriend does that and selects the "Settlement" visa, she will then be able to find "Marriage" after that and proceed with the application. I will mention this to him. Thank you.

Finally, about your "trial and error" comment, life is very much trial and error lol. When I brought my girlfriend to the UK we used the same process that mentioned the intent to marry there within the 6 month period. But I must confess that, at the time of the visa application, I had not asked her to marry me and never would I have done so without that 6 month period in the UK to establish if us being together there was going to work out. I am not a gambler! lol. If it did not work out, she would have gone back to the Philippines as single as when she arrived! But fortunately, everything went well and I DID propose marriage to her (and very romantically as all proposals should be and NOT just to fit in with government criteria!) and we did then live together in the UK for 6 years I had no expectation to move to the Philippines but.... here I am!

Thank you again Anne,

P.

Peter,

Reading your replies here leads me to the conclusion that you believe the same visa and migration process you and your wife followed some years ago is in place. It is not. The process is very different today. You were fortunate to have begun that journey during the Blair government years and that government had a deliberate policy of issuing settlement visas rather like confetti at a wedding; by today's standards, they were exceedingly easy and cheap to obtain. Not so today.

I have to say that you have misread the guidance notes which appear on the page Maharg linked (emphasis mine):

Note the emphasised words!!

Call me an old cynic if you will but I would be very surprised if UKVI were to issue a settlement visa of the fiancée variety to someone whose relationship with her sponsor was that new. Your friends will need to prove that their relationship is genuine and lasting and as well as meeting and spending time together in reality, they will need to provide chat logs from Skype - or one of the other instant messengers - emails, photos, proof of pending marriage and so on and so forth. As I said above, the requirements now are very different to those in the early 2000s. There is no visa category for those who have only just begun their relationship, think they're "in lurve", want to spend more time together (preferably in the UK), maybe get married at some stage, or maybe not, and may decide to continue living in the UK, or not: inconsiderate of UKVI, perhaps, but such is life!

BigMac warned you that the (settlement fiancée) visa to citizenship journey takes five years. It does - 2 thirty-month periods of FLR before you can apply for ILR and citizenship. Again much has changed.

There is a wealth of information contained within the various topics in this section which I do suggest that your friends take the time and trouble to read. Two members who have very recently been granted settlement visas of the fiancée type are Anne and Timmers. Anne is a Filipino applicant who sought to join and marry her childhood sweetheart whilst Timmers is an Englishman who brought his fiancée over recently and married her. Both have written extensively about their experiences in successfully applying for visas and following their respective weddings, both have applied for and been granted FLR. I commend their accounts to you and your friends.

The very same one that Maharg linked to in his reply to you! It is this one.

As I read that you are working here, I do hope you have a visa that permits you to work and a permit from DOLE and are not "existing" on tourist extensions. The optimum visa for you would be Section 13(a) which includes the right to work - and you don't then need a DOLE permit - but these are now becoming harder to obtain. When I applied 4 years ago, it was a two application process with the first year being probationary. Now the number of years of probationary visas is at the discretion of the local Alien Control Officer and before the first is granted, you would have to submit an ACPO Clearance Certificate issued by your local Police Service in the UK within the last 3 months as well as documentary proof that you can support your wife and family financially. Of course you have to be in the UK in order to apply for the Police Clearance which must be done in person.

Hi Markham. Many thanks for all that, all very helpful And yes, you are right, I DID misread that criteria but NOT after you had added the necessary emphasis to assist me see the light! "One" of the following........I admit to sometimes reading things a bit fast and I did miss that without the emphasis that the government would have been sensible to emphasize! OK, thats great Thanks

5 years? Gosh! :-(

Will look over Ane and Timmers account of their visa applications

Regarding my own visa status, as I said "do not let me distract myself from the thread topic" so let's not! I have jumped through all the hoops here you mentioned as I am living here and I am not a tourist. I do not understand people who repeatedly extend tourist visas and stay here for years? I am more committed Regarding the UK police documentation, I already argued that out over a year ago, went through the small print and qualified to the BI it did not apply to me. But this is a topic for a separate thread me thinks...not that I can be bothered to explain it to be honest ......

P

Hello again Peter.

The UKVI website can be viewed by the public. You can actually try to click as if you are the applicant. It will also lead to the link wherein one has to create an account to start the application process (this is the time the applicant should create their own account). My then fiancé and I took us awhile studying and understanding on how to apply for a visa. It also made things worse on our part because there was a transition/ change of name and website format during that time. It would be best to start navigating the UKVI website here https://www.gov.uk/check-uk-visa to give you the options:

What are you coming to the UK to do?

• Tourism, including visiting friends or family
• Work, academic visit or business
• Study
• Transit (on your way to somewhere else)
• Join partner or family for a long stay
• Get married
• Visit your child at school
• Get private medical treatment
• For official diplomatic or government business (including transit through the UK)

The link Maharg and Markham gave you is based on the information/ (your) friend's situation you shared to us. We, here in British Filipino would like to help out as much as we can based on our experiences.

By the way, if you want to view the threads of specific members, you might want to click their picture and name to view the account. There are 2 options: (1) Click on "Postings" or (2) "Information", scroll down until you reach the bottom of the page til you see "Find all threads by (name of member)"

Hi Bigmac and thanks for the reply I will set aside the awful quote you included in your response as that is extremely offensive as there is absolutely nothing but love involved in the relationship

They only met just before Christmas

yeah right.

look--we are here on this forum by choice--to offer help, experience and advice to all and any that ask. we do not sit in judgement on others whether they choose to have high moral values--or a more realistic down to earth attitude. i regret if what i wrote has caused you offence--it wasnt meant to.

You've got nothing to apologise for, Bigmac. The point you made was a valid one and totally non-offensive.

The Fiancee visa is not a visa where you can come here and then decide to get married if you want to. It is a visa specifically to get married within the 6 month, and you need to show proof that you have made efforts to arrange a wedding and that your relationship is at a stage where you are ready for marriage.

OK Bigmac, thanks for taking the time to reply again but it seems evident that we are two people who are not going to get along. No probs. I am sure we both understand that there are folk who mesh and folk who don't and we are the latter unfortunately. I do not find your posts helpful and, for the second time, I have found your words unwelcome. Your cynical approach to the ability for a couple to, quite literally, "fall" in love, is not helpful to finding the right visa for my friend and the girl who he has quickly developed feelings for and whose feelings have been returned. If you do not sit in judgement of others, as you claim, you would not have quoted my text followed by "Yeah right", inferring that what I had stated was impossible. I once "fell" in love with a girl in a heartbeat (not a Filipina) and it panned out to be the worst experience imaginable as when it turned out that I was not the right person for her, my deep seated feelings for her, that I had absolutely no control over, caused me great pain and suffering like never before. I am unsure if all people experience "falling" in love - I personally favour growing to love someone instead of having such strong emotional feelings that are actually not based on any real knowledge of the person. But who are we mere humans to choose which one we find?! Generally we just follow our heart and our instincts


Seriously Bigmac, I am grateful for you all here who take the time to post and help but after responding to you, at length, you chose only to respond to the first paragraph of my post and not to anything else. I do not need input from people who use derogatory expressions about finding an Asian wife because I have one who is my perfect partner and I have heard all the derogatory expressions about this too many times and I am sick of them. I certainly do not wish to hear them in a community that promotes and understands such mixed relationships. I also do not need input from those who doubt my words when all I am doing is reporting what I see and believe to be the truth. My friend is a really nice guy who has had a rough time finding the happiness with a partner that I have fortunately found. In the short space of time that has elapsed since meeting this girl, who he has been chatting with online for several months before travelling here to meet her, he has given me every reason to believe that he has found someone who he genuinely believes has every chance of becoming the right girl for him. This belief has led him to ask me about the process to enable her to come to the UK to spend time together there to establish if he is right and if she feels the same about the relationship during and after that.


It seems that the choice of visa's available does not allow for a couple to spend time together in the UK specifically to further their relationship and make decisions based upon that experience. In my experience there has never been. As I have eluded to in earlier posts, that is due to the shortsightedness of the government and not seeing things from the perspective of those people wishing to use the service. Having said this, the Tourist visa does allow this but unfortunately, if they find they wish to marry within the period of the visa, they cannot. Tourist visa's have always been referred to as "difficult to get" since I began along this road in 2004 yet I have never tried to get one and encountered this difficulty nor know of anyone, first hand, who has and has had such difficulty. I therefore do not know if there is any truth in this or not. I tend not to go much on hearsay. The alternative visa (which I refuse to call a fiance visa on the basis that no such visa exists!) is the joining a partner/family version that seems to require a degree of economy with the truth if, like in my case, the couple are not actually engaged to be married even though that prospect is a genuine possibility. I was very economical with the truth in all my documentation and never once stated anything that was untrue. But I also did not say things exactly as they were! I had to do this to be able to sleep with a clear mind! I will post a new message below in a moment to ask if my conclusions are correct so far.


P

Hi all,

Many thanks to each and every one of you for taking the time to reply. Whilst nobody seems to have singly set out what is needed to make a visa application, by wading through all the above I have established the following. If anyone wishes to confirm this is correct or flag up where it is wrong, please do so before I continue to advise my friend. This is not conclusive, it is only to start the couple on the right track for the right visa. I am not seeing any confirmation that this is the correct route through the system but I believe it is. Hopefully, someone here will confirm it yes or no please J

My proposed advice is as follows:-

For a Filipina wishing to travel to the UK to stay with and intend to marry a UK male citizen she should apply for a “Family of a Settled Person” visa. A very informative webpage, six pages actually, begins here:-

https://www.gov.uk/join-family-in-uk/overview

It is evident that there is no such application as a “Fiancée” visa application.

The application for a visa is to be made online so there is no need to actually know what the “title” of the visa is or its related application form number as these are not referenced in the online process. Only the visa type and sub type are required. To select the correct visa, it is only necessary to know the following information that you enter via 3 drop down menus:-

The “Reason for Visit” - Select “Settlement”

The “Visa Type” - Select “Settlement”

The “Visa Sub Type” - “Unmarried Partner”

The visa application can be made by either one of the couple. Let us proceed here with the application being made by the Filipina. The visa process is instigated here:-

https://www.visa4uk.fco.gov.uk/

An excellent guide to this online service (although not necessarily exactly for the unmarried partner application but certainly for the early stages of it) can be seen in this forum here:-

http://www.british-filipino.com/index.php?threads/spouse-visa-online-application.9773/

When you have registered to make a visa application online and you proceed past the 3 drop down menu questions mentioned above, you will find another drop down menu asking your marital status. Select “Fiancee/proposed Civil Partner”.

As I understand things, the applicant is then making an application for a visa to travel to the UK for 6 months and they will have the opportunity to marry within that time if that is what is desired.

So far, is this all correct or not please?

Many thanks,

P

I suggest you or your friend gets in touch with a visa agency.

They will obviously be of more use to you than any of us, who clearly aren't up to the job in your eyes.

Also, you can give them as much attitude as you want and they won't care because you'll be paying them.