I am a UK born national and my wife (we married yesterday in UK registry office) is a Sri Lankan national.
My wife's current status is 'temporary admission to remain in UK' but it's also worded as 'person without leave who has been served with a notice of liability to removal'. She has an ARC card and can work if the job is on the UKBA shortlist but cannot run a nuclear power plant or anything else on that list so does not work.
She is currently in the process of seeking Asylum (no interview or case heard in about 2 years) and was previously allowed to enter the UK on a student visa but because she was found to be working a few hours over the weekly limit this was retracted on a technical breach of conditions (i.e. it was not a regular occurrence and happened only a couple of times). Signing-in happens monthly, she has never claimed any benefits.
When we gave notice to marry HO replied within 2 days and said we could marry within 28 days notice period and no investigation as to the genuineness of our relationship would be considered unless we applied for a visa. (Every lawyer we spoke to said we would be refused to marry even after an investigation due to her temporary UK status, so they either lied or we just got lucky)
We have been living together for 7 months.
So now that we are married we are looking to make a new application and this is where it gets confusing.
Originally we thought we were going to apply for a 5 year route Spouse/Partner/ Family Visa as most posts talk about the 5yr route but on .gov website it says:
So I assume if we apply for the usual 5year route this will be denied and we would then have to apply again under the 10year route. Is that correct?If you’re in the UK on temporary admission or release (you don’t have a visa) you can only apply in a 10-year route
10 year route application seems to have less restrictions i.e. the annual salary required by me to earn doesn't need to be met or declared (I earn well over the threshold anyway and own my own mortgaged property with equity).
Notes for the 10yr visa state that one of the grounds for the visa application to be refused are if there has been a previous breach of visa conditions, which effectively has taken place. It's not a mandatory refusal but seems to be high up the list for someone to stamp refused on the application.
If a 10yr visa is likely to be refused and 5yr seems to be out of the question what visa application should we be applying for? Are there any other options?
Thanks in advance for any guidance as right now we are lost as to which route to take.
