In brief, DH (a US citizen) and I (a UK citizen) are going home to the UK after 20 years in the States. Yay!
Anyway. As well as the spousal visa, my DH is also eligible for UK citizenship via UKM (his mum is English). We had been planning that he will apply to register for his UK citizenship (UKM) from here in America but right now the timing seems to be such that should the house sell quickly we run the risk of being stuck here in the States for six months or more with no where to live and him not even allowed to await his UKM in the UK as a holiday visitor. (We're told that some UKM applications are taking almost a year whilst even straight forward ones seem to be taking more than 6 months).
So we are thinking that perhaps it would be better to apply for the spousal visa, which seems to be coming through quite quickly at the moment, then once we get to England, rather than continue on that route to naturalization, apply via UKM. Then he wouldn't have to take KOL and neither would we anymore need to move back to England within that three month visa period because we'd not need to worry about the timing at the "backend" of the 27 months.
On the face of it this seems to give us the flexibility we need as to timing our return home, even though it will give us a little more expense. Does anyone know if there's any reason we shouldn't/can't take this route? (i.e. changing immigration "route" mid-stream") I've spent days reading all the government sites and also tried to call them to no avail! I suspect that there's more knowledge and experience here than at a call centre in the UK anyway
Any thoughts or insights would be very gratefully received since my head is a mush of information but I'm struggling to make much sense of the complexities! Maybe it isn't complicated actually? Maybe we just apply for a spousal visa now, come home then go for the UKM???
Thanks...
