English Requirements Warning.

[Mike_B]

Hello all,

I am writing this as a word of warning to all about the current English language requirements.

My wife is a PhD student with a student visa applied for in 2102. She has been living and studying here for almost 2 years now, and has 1 year remaining on her student visa. Her Toefl IBT english test was due to expire so we thought it wise to apply for her FLR(m) in March this year to avoid paying for a new test. After confirming with the home office several times that it would be acceptable, we applied for the visa.

It took almost 2 months to receive a biometrics invitation which we did that same day, and returned. Fast forward a couple more weeks and we receive a letter stating that applications including tests from IBT are being held as an investigation has been launched due to fraudulent test results being discovered. By this point the application had taken much longer than expected since as far as we were concerned all criteria was met comfortably. My wife was called away abroad to Germany and Mexico to conferences which were important for her PhD, so we contacted the home office in mid May, asked how long it would take to have her documents and student visa returned, to which they said 10 working days. We cut our losses as although the money lost applying for the visa was difficult to swallow, her education is a big part of our future. Flights and accommodation were booked allowing almost 2 months for the return of the documents.

We were concerned at the length of time it was taking after the 10 working days had passed, and have since called them around 3 times per day for updates and contacted the MP who has made enquiries. Every call has resulted in different story, and in most cases a completely incompetent agent being deliberately obtuse. Every response we have received as to the whereabouts of her documents has been vague to the point of being ridiculous. We have been told they are on there way, they have been posted and will arrive tomorrow, only to call the next day and be told that the application hasn't even been cancelled.

Finally we arrive at the point of no return and have been forced to cancel all travel plans and withdraw my wife from the conferences she was due to attend, and today we found out why there has been such a delay.

The student visa she has been living here with, which is still valid for another year has been called in to question because she used that same English test which has recently been put under investigation. We were told that they were going to send her passport without the visa, and if she leaves the country she will not be granted re-entry, thus, destroying the last 2 years work on her PhD. She found this out by accident only after questioning why the visa would be removed from the passport. The home office have been deliberately concealing the true reason for these delays and stringing us along since the moment we applied in March.

I spoke to them today to ask why they have not written to those affected by these English tests and was given the answer of "I don't know, but I can see your point". I asked if everyone who has previously used this English test for student visa purposes was being subjected to the same scrutiny, and he confirmed that yes, this was the case. I asked why the invalid test is STILL displayed on their own website as a valid test, and he could not answer.

We have had our year ruined by the home office and their incompetence, my wife's PhD has been negatively affected, and we have lost thousands of pounds now.

Please, if you have an English test from IBT, Toefl etc, get a different one. If you have experienced delays in getting documents back and have one of these as your English requirement, ask if you're under investigation. Also, be careful leaving the country, even for a summer holiday, if you are here on any visa that you have used one of those tests to gain, you don't want a nasty surprise on re-entry like my wife was almost subjected to.

I apologise for the long post, but I felt it important to make people aware of what has happened to us over these last months, as I'm certain that the home office will keep this information from you for as long as possible, like they have done with us.