EEA to Tier 1?

[moose]

Hi all

I'm an Australian who has been living in London on a WHV and I'm currently waiting in Australia for my HSMP initial application which seems to be taking forever (I applied May 16, they're only processing Mar 13 atm). I'm also engaged to my Finnish/Australian fiancee who is still in London.

If she were to fly back to Australia briefly for us to get married, as I understand it, I'd be right to just show up at Heathrow with her and marriage certificate in hand, which would be great.

Unfortunately, she's going to be studying in Finland from late August. I was planning to stay in London for work for a little while so we have a bit of a safety net (neither of us speak Finnish, so finding work would be difficult). But because she won't be living/working/studying in the UK, I believe I'd no longer be legitimately working in the UK (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Thus, the subject of this post - would I be able to switch from an EEA category into Tier 1 without having to go all the way back to bloody Australia, to do more waiting, yet again?

This is totally getting absolutely bloody ridiculous.

[vinny]

Thus, the subject of this post - would I be able to switch from an EEA category into Tier 1 without having to go all the way back to bloody Australia, to do more waiting, yet again?

Unfortunately, no.

[moose]

Thanks for an excellent response

Hmm what a bloody pain. Will have to look into a marriage visa for finland, and applying for tier 1 from there.