Tier 4 to Spouse Visa

[wilsnunn]

Hi all,

I understand that several similar questions to this are on the forum already however I am still a little confused and would like to unconfused myself, please forgive me for any repetition with other questions on this forum.

- I recently got married to a Singaporean studying medicine on a T4 visa
- She is about to finish her degree and start her doctor training (known as foundation years (F1 & F2)) in August
- For the foundation year program, international students normally receive a new T4 visa sponsored by Health Education England (HEE) - without the usual 20 hour work limit obviously
- We would rather that she is on a spouse visa so that after 2 years, she can apply for ILR
- The gov.uk website states that you can only apply for a spouse visa within 28 days of the expiry of your current visa
- Her current BRP for the T4 visa expires end of November 2018
- She will need a new visa before she can start her foundation year

My questions:

- Are we able to apply for a spouse visa now despite not being 28 days before the expiry of the current visa?
- I have read that it is not possible to switch from T4 to spouse visa in the UK, and only possible in the country of origin (in her case Singapore) is this true?

We ideally want to get this sorted as soon as possible as the HEE T4 visa contact people have started the process of setting up the application for a new T4 visa, and we wish to avoid having to do this.

Thank you in advance for your help with this!

[Casa]

Hi all,

I understand that several similar questions to this are on the forum already however I am still a little confused and would like to unconfused myself, please forgive me for any repetition with other questions on this forum.

- I recently got married to a Singaporean studying medicine on a T4 visa
- She is about to finish her degree and start her doctor training (known as foundation years (F1 & F2)) in August
- For the foundation year program, international students normally receive a new T4 visa sponsored by Health Education England (HEE) - without the usual 20 hour work limit obviously
- We would rather that she is on a spouse visa so that after 2 years, she can apply for ILR
- The gov.uk website states that you can only apply for a spouse visa within 28 days of the expiry of your current visa
- Her current BRP for the T4 visa expires end of November 2018
- She will need a new visa before she can start her foundation year

My questions:

- Are we able to apply for a spouse visa now despite not being 28 days before the expiry of the current visa? Yes. You've misunderstood the 28 day rule. This isn't relevant when switching.
- I have read that it is not possible to switch from T4 to spouse visa in the UK, and only possible in the country of origin (in her case Singapore) is this true? No it's not. Submit a FLR(M) application.

We ideally want to get this sorted as soon as possible as the HEE T4 visa contact people have started the process of setting up the application for a new T4 visa, and we wish to avoid having to do this.

Thank you in advance for your help with this!

[4uvak]

On gov.uk site it says:
When you can apply to extend or switch
The earliest you can apply is 28 days before your current permission to stay in the UK expires.
If you’re extending your visa to stay with the same family member, any time you have left will be added to your new stay up to a maximum of 28 days.

It is a bit confusing, so seniors will coment on this. I would not think she needs to wait till her current visa expires, but it says what it says.

Regarding switch in the UK, the same website states that:
When you can’t get a family visa
You can’t apply for a family visa if your family member (you in this situation) is in the UK temporarily on a work visa or student visa.
You can apply to stay with them as a dependant instead.
You’ll usually need to leave the UK to apply for a family visa if either:
you have permission to be in the UK as a visitor
your visa is for 6 months or less

[wilsnunn]

My questions:

- Are we able to apply for a spouse visa now despite not being 28 days before the expiry of the current visa? Yes. You've misunderstood the 28 day rule. This isn't relevant when switching.
- I have read that it is not possible to switch from T4 to spouse visa in the UK, and only possible in the country of origin (in her case Singapore) is this true? No it's not. Submit a FLR(M) application.

We ideally want to get this sorted as soon as possible as the HEE T4 visa contact people have started the process of setting up the application for a new T4 visa, and we wish to avoid having to do this.

Thank you in advance for your help with this!

Dear Casa,

Thank you for your response, could you please clarify how I have misunderstood as on the gov.uk webpage (link) it states:

When you can apply to extend or switch
The earliest you can apply is 28 days before your current permission to stay in the UK expires.

If you’re extending your visa to stay with the same family member, any time you have left will be added to your new stay up to a maximum of 28 days.

On gov.uk site it says:
When you can apply to extend or switch
The earliest you can apply is 28 days before your current permission to stay in the UK expires.
If you’re extending your visa to stay with the same family member, any time you have left will be added to your new stay up to a maximum of 28 days.

It is a bit confusing, so seniors will coment on this. I would not think she needs to wait till her current visa expires, but it says what it says.

Regarding switch in the UK, the same website states that:
When you can’t get a family visa
You can’t apply for a family visa if your family member (you in this situation) is in the UK temporarily on a work visa or student visa.
You can apply to stay with them as a dependant instead.
You’ll usually need to leave the UK to apply for a family visa if either:
you have permission to be in the UK as a visitor
your visa is for 6 months or less

Hi 4uvak,

Thank you also for your response. Regarding the second part of your response, I believe that this is talking about a spouse (person A) wishing to stay in the UK with his/her spouse (person B) if person B is on a student visa and person A needs a visa to stay with person B. This is not the case for me as I am a British Citizen. Please correct me if I am wrong.

[sah10406]

You are conflating the rules for several different types of application. I think you would probably benefit from one-to-one professional advice.

[wilsnunn]

Just to clarify (sorry I realised hat this wasn’t clear in the initial post) I am a British Citizen, so the case mentioned by 4uvak is not applicable to me.

Sah10406, if you could please point out where I am mistaken it would be much appreciated as the information I have provided above was the amalgamation of two professional one-to-one services and I am frustrated by having been given conflicting information by two different paid for services.

[wilsnunn]

Casa, please could you clarify how I have misunderstood, the information that I took was from this text of the gov.uk webpage:

When you can apply to extend or switch
The earliest you can apply is 28 days before your current permission to stay in the UK expires.

If you’re extending your visa to stay with the same family member, any time you have left will be added to your new stay up to a maximum of 28 days.

[CR001]

The withing 28 days before visa expires is not relevant to switching visa categories ie tier 4 to spouse visa. She can switch as soon as she got married.

The bit you are referring to is for extensions of the same category visa ie a spouse visa extension after the initial spouse visa.

Also you reference applying for ILR after 2 years. There is no two year spouse visa route. It is a 5 year route, 2 x 2.5 year visas, before she can apply for ILR unless she has 10 years legal stay with a combination of visas.

[wilsnunn]

Dear CR001,

Thank you for your reply, I realised that the 2 years was out-of-date information that I had been provided with. However, she has been in the UK since 2010 on a combination of Tier 4 visas, which should be fine for the 10 year path to ILR?

Do you have any documentation to show that you can switch visa from Tier 4 to spouse at any time, as I was previously told otherwise.

[CR001]

No documentation but 1000s have done it, myself included. In my case, my original visa was still valid for 3.5 years when I switched successfully into FLR(M) spouse visa.

Perhaps you are over thinking.

She is free to switch if recently married and does not have to wait till within 28 days of a completely different visa category to switch to spouse visa.

[sah10406]

And see also this published query to the Home Office about the same matter, and their reply:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ ... spouse_vis

[raindrops]

To OP: not sure if you are on the forum anymore but if you are, what happened to your wife’s visa application? Did you go through with her Tier 4 extension or switch to a spouse visa?
Any light you can shed on this I would be gratefulF particularly regarding how the employer handled this change in immigration status midway through the foundation programme application.