My Immigration to the UK and Spousal Visa Process

Timing Summary

STANDARD PROCESS (NOT PRIORITY)

2019-Jan-9  - Application submitted
2019-Jan-15 - Biometrics appointment
2019-Jan-22 - Documents arrived (passport + doc copies) VFS Global NYC
2019-Mar-27 - "Decision Made" email arrived
2019-Mar-29 - Passport with visa arrived at my home 

66 calendar days
48 working days (UK)

I'll note as well that they requested my wife's divorce papers on March 18th which we neglected to include and then gave us the wrong email address (for which they apologized) which ate up about a week. I delivered the additional requested documents to the correct email address on March 26th. 

More Details

Yesterday, on April 5, 2019, I immigrated to Scotland from the United States. It was a stressful and, at times, confusing process. I thought I would document our experiences in case they help anyone else. I'll note that all of our experiences reflect a specific moment in time therefore circumstances, rules, and services may have changed.

At a high level, the process for me entailed:

1. Creating and submitting an application for the visa on the UK visa website. Also, paying the application and NHS fees. (submitted 2019-Jan-9)
2. Making an appointment and getting biometrics (photo and fingerprints) captured at an approved office. (appointment 2019-Jan-15)
3. Sending my original passport as well as sending or uploading copies of the required documents to the New York City offices of the private company VFS Global that supports the UK in its visa operations. (delivered 2019-Jan-22)
4. Waiting until I heard back from the UK government office with a "decision made" email. (arrived morning of 2019-Mar-27)
5. Accepting my passport and documents (if any) from UPS. (arrived morning of 2019-Mar-29)
6. The visa itself is in the form of an image printed onto a page of your passport - it looks like an image of an ID card. It is good for entry for 30 days from the specified date.
7. I used the visa to enter the UK from the US on April 4th, 2019. I picked up my residence card at a post office in the UK on April 6th. The preferred post office was specified during the application process.

In terms of timing for your application, as long as you have a specific date in mind I'm unaware of any reason to wait - you should probably apply as soon as possible. Here are some lessons I gleaned from my process.

Online Application Submission

• You SUBMIT your application at the same time you make your biometrics appointment and make the big payments - can't remember the exact dollar amounts now.
• Once you SUBMIT your application, you cannot change the "travel date". Learned this the hard way.
• Once you SUBMIT your application, keep in mind that you cannot view it or print for some period of time, I think until after the biometrics appointment.
• Above two bullets were because I wanted to change my travel date after I submitted it, but that would have entailed creating and submitting a new application and I would have had to track down all of the info (dates of travel, etc) I put into the original because I could not view the previously submitted application. Also, a new application requires paying again and waiting until your first application expires and they refund the fee.
• You can choose PRIORITY for additional fee (I think it was $800) that will speed your processing up a bit. I regretted going STANDARD and not paying for PRIORITY - an oversight on my part - but it ended up fine in the end and saved us money, just more stressful!
• PREMIUM is different from PRIORITY. I didn't consider PREMIUM (offered by the third party company VFS Global) because everyone said it was worse than useless.
• Apparently, if the travel date you specify is in the future when they finish processing, the visa will reflect it. For mine, the travel date was in the past by the time they were processing it. They put my travel date for 5 days after I received the passport and visa back from UPS (received March 29, visa entry good for 30 days starting April 3.)

Documents Submission

• A company called VFS Global handles the visa process on the US side of things. As of this writing, it is fair to say that VFS Global does not have a great reputation among those of us going through this process. The UK government office makes the actual decisions.
• Aside from your passport, send only copies, not originals.
• The VFS Global document upload feature may be fixed now, but I would encourage you to be prepared to print and UPS overnight your documents. If you send printed documents, don't send originals (except for your passport of course). The upload function on the VFS Global website did not work for me at all and I ended up rushing like crazy to get everything printed and shipped. Hopefully, the upload option is now reliably working, but you never know.
• It may be fixed now, but I would recommend buying your UPS shipping labels (shipment and return) from a local UPS store rather than from VFS Global. I bought the labels online through VFS Global's system and they auto-generated almost 20 different labels for my one shipment creating a ton of confusion and stress with tracking. Also, the UPS shops are better able to track and verify labels that they produce in-house.
•  My circumstances were different from many - my wife and I have been married for over 20 years. We've jointly owned our house of 17 years. We have savings in joint accounts that exceed the requirements. She had a documented job offer ready. I would say we were a "slam dunk" so keep that in mind. Our documents consisted of:
• My birth certificate
• Our marriage certificate
• My wife's divorce papers (We forgot to include this and it was requested later)
• A year's worth of statements from our joint savings accounts
• My expired passport - every page
• My active passport - every page
• Main page of my wife' active passport
• Last two mortgage statements
• Mortgage statement from my brother-in-law and his wife (who live in the UK) proving that he and his wife own their flat
• Letter from my brother-in-law and his wife stating that we have permission to live in their flat and attesting that it has adequate space for us to live with them and will not violate the overcrowding definition in the relevant housing act..
• Sponsor letter by my wife explaining our relationship history and reasons for moving to UK.
• Letter by me explaining why I want to move to the UK and my history with my sponsor (my wife.)
• Letter from my wife's employer attesting that she has employment ready upon arrival.
• I'll note that we did not provide any photos, emails, facebook exchanges, whatsapp chats, or anything else of that variety but our relationship was pretty well established by the history I described earlier.

Biometrics

My appointment was at an immigration office in Detroit, Michigan. I was scheduled for an 11am appointment on a Tuesday and arrived, as requested, 15 minutes early at 10:45. As far as I can tell, I was the only person there for that particular process. I was done and out before my scheduled time. It took, in total, about 11 minutes. Biometrics included photo and fingerprints.