Arlene and Stephen Watty - a deserving case under the immigration rules?

I found this story on Balita Pinoy:

http://www.balitapinoy.net/journal/...attle_to_stay_in_UK_with_husband#.Uw9Y9vl_vbA

This looks like something we should perhaps get behind?

The Home Office's suggestion that a couple who don't meet the income threshold should "go on holiday to the Philippines and apply from there" is a classic of British bureaucracy.

Yes. I saw that too.

The story is indeed by a journalist on the Norwich Evening News.

It's when I read stories like theirs that I am so glad I no longer live in the UK. If the Home Office did but realise that Arlene has very likely saved the Government quite a considerable amount of money by nursing her husband back to full health. Had she not been there, I've no doubt that he'd be in receipt of multiple benefits and probably require residential or in-own-home care at the tax-payers' expense.

We all have to live and abide by the rules, they had more than ample time to put their house in order, at the end of the day excuses come cheap, that's what my boss tells me.

I do not think that the UKBA will afford us any favours and we shouldn't expect any, tough but its the truth.

I think that is almost certainly the case.

What did the application fail on? I don't see the reference to income threshold. Maybe I have missed it?

"Up to a point, Lord Copper!" I do take your point, but I do wonder if, in the actual circumstances of this couple, they really did "

I don't buy this rules is rules jobsworth crap nonsense. You know as well as I that UKBA are deliberately seeking soft targets in order to get their removal figures up. If Mr Watty had been born in France, or any other EU country, then UKBA could not act against him and his wife in this way. It is about time that the British Government started to treat its electorate other than as second class citizens and stopped kow-towing to the mandarins in Brussels and their 'uman rights nonsense. A non-British EU citizen living in the UK has MORE rights than a British person - and that, sir, is fact.

It's not clear. I intend to find out. There is a suggestion that it was the income threshold, but at first glance that seems unlikely, if both incomes are taken into account. It seems more likely that she overstayed her student visa.

I do sympathise with the couple but if the UKBA bends the rules for this couple then surely they have to do the same in other similar cases. Its hard to judge this case because all the facts are not known to us. Its like a court of law, you must take the emotion out of the case to enable a fair verdict to be given. We all know that they do not always make the right decision but we all have to live with the decision and what the law dictates to us. And the law dictates that they can appeal, not all countries would allow that.

You know, in life we don't always get our own way especially with the UKBA, I know that from personal experience.

It's not a case of bending any rules, more a case of ministerial discretion.

What's ministerial discretion? I also sympathise but if I were in their position I wouldn't have much hope of anything coming from it. There's no sympathy in big organisations like that (few and far between anyhow).

We all know that the word discretion has not and never will be entered into the UKBA dictionary. They will only ever work with blinkered eyes, that's how all UK government offices work and always will.

We have no choice but to jump through their hoops, they set the rules not us.

Talking about justice, what about the two soldier killers sentenced yesterday, if I had my way they would be hung drawn and quartered, that's why I don't make the rules, my emotion would take over.

Nevertheless, Timmers, if an applicant ticks all the boxes with the laws and regs then the UKBA have to abide by those laws and regs too. If you see what I mean.

However, we don't know what their application failed on. Or do we?

I agree with you 100%, without those boxes ticked you are going nowhere. I hope we can find out which box the unfortunate couple did not tick. Reading between the lines, something I shouldn't really do I feel there is more to the visa denial than meets the eye. If she just overstayed then that's a schoolboy error and they only have themselves to blame, but lets wait and see.

They may not know of the Surinder Singh case and the EEA route ...

It says in red, under the photograph: "Stephen and Arlene Watty of Hemsby are facing an immigration battle after the Home Office claimed they do not earn enough for Arlene to stay in this country.".

there could be more to this than meets the eye though, as apparently they are both working so you would think they would be earning enough between them as I believe both salaries can be taken into account.

EDIT - I notice this too: "As her student visa expired, Arlene applied for leave to remain - the common route for foreign nationals who marry British citizens". So yes, perhaps she was an overstayer.