UK family visit visa from Saudi HELP!

[kamran2009]

Hi everyone,

I would greatly appreciate any advise in regards to my situation:

I am a British expat working in Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, and my wife is Pakistani. She applied for a UK family visit visa in July 2009 in Islamabad (we were not living together at that time, I was still in Riyadh). Her main reason for going was because my mother was in hospital (we didn't mention this in application). We put her sponsor as my father. Her application was refused because it didn't meet all the reqs of paragraph 41 of Immigration Rules (namely i,ii, and vi). Now she is with me in Riyadh and we will apply from here. We want to go asap as my mother is still in hospital. These are some of our issues:

1) I left my previous job in Riyadh in July 2009 and started a new job in Riyadh in Dec 2009. Between this time my bank balance was 0 as I transferred all my money before I left my prev job, but now I have transferred the money back to my account on starting the new job. As I am supporting my wife, I understand that I need to provide 3 months of bank statements, but will it be a problem if my balance has been 0 until Dec 2009?

2) Is it worth opening an account for my wife just to show she has some money in there?

3) Should we mention my mothers illness, and perhaps provide a medical report as proof? Will this help our application (on sympathetic grounds)?

Does anyone have experience with VFS in Saudi?

As long as my wife is with me in Saudi, can she only go to UK as a visitor? What can she do about settling?

Thank you for your help.