I’m British, and want to return home with my foreign partner. Help!

[brownbreadd]

Hi,

I am a British citizen with a foreign partner. We are currently residing in Dubai and working here, however long term I am very quickly realising that this isn’t going to be my forever place.

I am desperately missing friends and family, and the way of live back home in the UK (yes, really!) and would like to start looking into ways to return home, but with my partner.

My partner is Turkish, we both moved here to Dubai earlier this year to be together after a lengthy long distance relationship.

we are both working here, earning a good salary, and are unmarried.

does anybody know of the process in which I should take in order to look at the possibility of coming back to the UK and bringing him, too?

Do you think that countries shouldn’t have rules on who can move there? If you’re not wanting to even get married then you’re clearly not prepared to paid that high a “price for love” 😂

You can get some good free advice online, but probably not on here. Maybe try here : www.immigrationboards.com/index.php

ah ah ah everyone telling the OP to go read the gov pages 🙄 🤣

as if anything immigration or dual citizenship was ever explained early in a straightforward way.

good luck OP

What on earth are you talking about?! It’s staggeringly beautiful with blossom trees everywhere, wall to wall warm sunshine for nearly a month here, everywhere looks stunning. Wimbledon, Chelsea flower show, summer festivals etc etc all to come. I pity you if you are unable to enjoy any of this ☀️

This is what I really miss. The greenery, spring, daffodils.. just the feeling of spring / summer arriving in the UK.
Dubai is great in its own way but certainly not ‘home’.

I mean the thousands of women who move and live there find it just fine.

He may be genuine but home office would want to be convinced about the same. You will have to provide proof of relationship.

No, they just need to get married and that’s the proof sorted - the Home Office will not ask for any other evidence. This isn’t the US where they do loads of detailed investigation into the validity of relationships and want to see your texts/holiday photos etc.

And if they don’t want to get married, then they live together for two years, evidenced by rental contracts/bills, and then apply for an unmarried partner visa. Still no romantic texts/photos needed.

So many of the posters on here clearly don’t have the foggiest idea how the system actually works. This isn’t the place to regurgitate things you’ve vaguely picked up about greencard marriages from American sitcoms.

Not true. If they have the slightest reason to tnink the marriage may be for an immigration permission, they will absolutely look for a lot more proof than a marriage certificate

@NidaNearby That’s not what happened when my friend, married for 20 years with two children, decided to move back to the UK. They were shocked at how much evidence of their relationship that they had to provide.

Not true. You need to show text messages, photo evidence, call logs to show that your relationship is genuine and subsisting. We had to do all that for my husbands initial visa in 2020. For subsequent visas we have to show joint bills as proof of cohabitation.
Anyone could get married just for the papers for a visa so you need all the other evidence to prove it's not a fake marriage.

I have lived in Dubai and the novelty wears off really quickly. It’s very one dimensional. I can’t stand the summer heat, nor the relentless bottomless brunch culture. It is manufactured from start to finish. I’d be wondering about my future too. Be careful op. Be sure he is what you want, and you don’t waste the best years of your life.

I'd also caution whether he is what you want, and whether you are what he wants too.

You have a number of people giving you advice on coming home/bringing him home, including marriage. This feels a stretch, given that you are only months into the relationship which was long distance and only weeks into living together which has come about as you were going to Dubai anyway and you thought it was an opp to be together. So he left Turkey to find work with you.

This feels like decisions based on chance, rather than intent. And as you've already posted that you are pushing him away, there seems to be trouble in paradise already. To be expected as you are so very recently out of a twelve year marriage.

The final thing is that HE does not want to come to the UK?

It just feels like there's a lot of complexity around what is a very, very new relationship. It's not going to be easy, for sure.

Absolutely not true

This definitely was not the case for us. I couldn’t just say ‘oh, I’ve totally got a job, no problem, let him in’.

And we had been married for years and years with children who were born in the UK and a house here.

It is always pointless trying to answer/help people who cannot be honest and factual. Or, at the very least, name change so the inconsistencies are not for all to see in previous posts.

The biggest concern, imo, is that they are kidding themselves, first and foremost. This has all the hallmarks of a vulnerable woman swept up in a holiday romance scam.

"Crazy, I know/but it's lurve/we are soul mates/never felt like this before" etc etc etc

It’s an incredibly tough process. My son lives abroad with his foreign born wife. Two children both with British passports. The way I understand it he can come here, earn a certain salary and then apply for a spouse visa for his wife. Or he can have £88000 in his bank account and then his wife can come with him. That £88,000 was £62,500 and it has just gone up.
Before 2012 a British citizen could bring a foreign born spouse to live here (no recourse to public funds stamped on passport) but this right was removed.
We have people living in Britain from all over the world but woe betide a British citizen if you fall in love with someone from another country. This since Brexit includes anyone from Europe too. My son has an Irish passport and he could live there with his wife immediately without having £88000 in the bank. He wants to live in Britain though so saving continues. So good luck to you and let’s hope legislation is more kinder to its own people in the future.

first steps would be to consult an immigration lawyer

Also, I expect my house will be checked as somewhere they can stay until they sort out their own accommodation.

It's not impossible.

I live here in the UK with my foreign husband. We were both living abroad when we applied for a leave to enter as a spouse of a British Citizen.

There have been a few changes since we went through the process but the key thing is that you are in a bona fide relationship that you can prove, and that your dependent will not rely on benefits in the UK. This means that either or both of you have to meet minimum income or savings requirements.

Just go through the process set up in the government requirements posted early in the thread. You might not like them, but that's the way it is. Go through each clause one by one and get all your documentation sorted.

You'd be going through this as a married couple or civil partnership - get your relationship sorted (marriage is best). Don't dwell on worker visas, etc. If you have a short history in your relationship, and are not willing to commit to marriage, then that will be a massive red flag and I can see why any application would be denied.

She doesn’t mean they will just let him in but it is an alternative to having to spend six months apart.

If the OP can show she’s earned above the financial threshold abroad with the same company for at least six months, or for at least 12 months if more than one employer, AND she has a verifiable job offer for a job earning over the threshold starting within three months then assuming a successful application meeting all the other requirements her husband could move to the UK at the same time as her.

The problem is it’s so hard to get a new job that’s prepared to wait up to three months for you, which is why most people end up having to send the UK spouse on ahead of the immigrant spouse.

The process is long, and unless your partner is a skilled worker and can work in the UK, it will be next to impossible.

He is unlikely to be allowed into Britain right away, and he will have to apply for a work visa and he has to be really NEEDED in UK to be accepted.

You will find all the answers as to how you apply in gov.co.uk

What are the vile human rights atrocities on women, please? I'd like to learn more from your perspective. Please don't ask me to Google.

It used to be the case that if you were outside the UK you had to show you had savings of around £62,500 (IIRC) to bring in a foreign spouse when neither of you had work in the UK. I don’t know if this has changed—there was a lot of talk about the possibility of it changing some years ago but I don’t think it did change in the end.
The main thing that helped, I found, when I did this was to be married. And be married for a while. We lived in DP’s country as a married couple for a decade before returning to the UK and pretty much sailed through the process. When we did it, if you have been married more than a certain time—I forget if it was 3 years or 5 years—your spouse got indefinite leave to remain straight away, instead of some lesser status. Once again, this might have changed. But being married for a few years really made a difference in the process for us.