CFO........... Commission on Filipinos Overseas...

Thank you for the info. I'll go once my visa is valid.

@Mattecube I got my CFO sticker its really fast hehe cant moan about it thank god for that!

looking forward for the winter weather oh dear! so hot in the Philippines and so cold in the UK what you can say so lucky with the weather!!! haha

My flight tomorrow

Have a great flight all the best for the future.

Hi,
My wife was told she needs to attend a seminar for our 3 month old daughter.
She has already attended the seminar for herself back in March 2017 and will get her blue sticker once she has renewed her vingette.
I have emailed CFO to ask if this is correct.
No Responce!
I thought children under 12 only needed a sticker.

Anyone know?

TIA

Is a cfo sticker required for standard visitor visas? ??

Nope. This is only for settlement visa.

Hi, first-time poster here, I hope this is the right place to ask this:

I'm a bit lost with this CFO Sticker requirement, and I'm getting worried it's gonna put a big spanner in the works for us. I and my wife got married in Hong Kong in January, and we are in the process of obtaining an EU Family Permit so she can join me in the UK.
I just learned about the CFO requirements, and in particular the "original Report of Marriage duly registered by the Philippine Embassy/Consulate or the Department of Foreign Affairs".

Unfortunately we couldn't get the Report of Marriage immediately our wedding in Hong Kong, because the Hong Kong marriage office needs 2 weeks to produce marriage certificate copies. So we are now trying to file the Report of Marriage request by post to the Filipino consulate there.

I'm getting some conflicting information from the Hong Kong consulate about what is required for the CFO and how long it's going to take. According to them, an NSO security paper form is what's needed for the CFO, and that means the report of marriage needs to be transmitted to the DFA in Manila, and registered by them, with can take up to 4 months according to the DFA website!

Our EU Family Permit will start on 25 March and will only be valid for 6 months, after which we have to apply for UK residency, so waiting for possibly more than 4 months is going to make things impossible.

Does anyone here know if the CFO officers will accept a Report of Marriage issued by the Consulate, rather than an NSO-security paper version issued by the DFA? Am I overthinking this?
It's also unclear to me whether the Filipino consulate will be able to issue us a Report of Marriage immediately or whether we will have to wait for them to send it to the DFA and wait 2-4 months to get it after that. Anyone has had to handle that situation before?

so where is your wife now ?

She's back in Davao, about to file her Family Permit application.

so where is your wife now ?

why is she applying for a family permit ?

Oh, I just realised I missed an important point to my story. I'm French! And I've lived in London for the past 10 years.
That's why she's applying for an EU Family Permit, so that she can be allowed in the UK. She will then apply for a UK Residence card to stay in the UK permanently.

QUOTE="nico35, post: 170752, member: 6578"]Hi, first-time poster here, I hope this is the right place to ask this:

...
Our EU Family Permit will start on 25 March and will only be valid for 6 months, after which we have to apply for UK residency, so waiting for possibly more than 4 months is going to make things impossible.

...[/QUOTE]

Hmmm... yes HK another place where the Filipina can marry and then return to the RP and forget it ever happened if it doesn't work out and/or the couple choose not to register it!


Not impossible - even if it is 4 months it only takes a day to attend the CFO seminar and get your sticker.

Congrats - nice to meet someone who can simply take his wife to the UK without having to pay the extortionate visa fees etc. etc. Vive la France!

We had a related problem in that when my Missus attended the CFO Seminar in Cebu we hadnt received our shengan for Portugal so they gave her (after I had returned to Europe) a voucher to exchange later.

Once we had the shengan she sent me a scan of the voucher which said for the UK not Portugal (I think this was because my passport copy was from UK) So we elected to treat the visa as a "holiday" as it was an entry visa not a settlement visa and I had to puchase a return ticket for her to exit the Fils without the sticker not wishing to re-engage with the loverly Nuns in the Cebu Office.

It was nerve wracking waiting for the text that said she had cleared Manila emmigration Phew.

Made no difference 4 years later when she renewed her passport here in the UK.

Once in the UK she will have to be resident with you for 5 years before qualifying for PR . Have you got your PR Bio-Metric Resident Card?

It doesn't matter which country a Filipino spouse is headed, it's the foreigner husband's (or wife's) nationality that determines which CFO seminar the spouse attends.

Yes, I suppose a worse case scenario it would be possible yes; I just learned that as long as she comes to the UK within 6 months of the EEA Family Permit it doesn't really matter when she arrives. I really hope we don't have to wait for so long though .

Thanks . Yeah, that was a nice surprise. Who ever said anything bad about the EU!?

We better get this done before Brexit is finalised though!

Wow, this was a bold move! How did you manage to "elect" to treat the Visa as an entry Visa? I would have thought that was the decision of the Border control officers in Manilla, not you!
Glad to hear it all panned out, though.

No, I don't have a residence card in the UK. That is actually part of the reason why I couldn't file a Spouse Visa to marry her in the UK, so we got married in HK instead. It might have been a blessing in disguise, as it seems the EEA Family permit is both cheaper and faster to obtain, from what I hear (fingers crossed).

It and the shengan is an entry visa and with a return ticket was treated as "tourism" by Manila no sticker required

the fact is--because you are allowed to bring your wife into the UK using the EEA family permit, this has saved you thousands of pounds that the rest of us are having to pay. i am well aware we could avail ourselves of the same privilege if we chose to live outside our home country.

Oh I see! Oh that's brilliant! So all we should need is a return ticket, and she'll be able to fly without the CFO sticker!?
Well I suppose it will be a good plan B if we can't get the CFO sticker with the Report of Marriage from the HK Consulate then. Thanks for the tip!

Oh wow, of course. For some reason it never occurred to me that the EEA Family permit would also apply this way around. Damn, the more I learn about those immigration rules the more nonsensical they get...