Edward: two years, three refusals, one family

Edward had been in Japan for eleven years when his mother's health began to fail. He and his wife decided to move the family to the UK — his wife, their daughter, and the assumption, which he had never had cause to examine, that a British citizen can go home.

The minimum income requirement was the first obstacle. His Japanese salary was comfortable and had been stable for years. It counted for very little, because the requirement is assessed against UK earnings, and he had none. The route open to him was to move to the UK alone, find qualifying work, hold it for the required period, and then apply for his family to join him.

He tried a different route first, and was refused.

The second application failed on documents. A set of bank statements had not been certified in the required form, and a translation had been prepared by a translator whose credentials were not accepted. Neither refusal engaged with whether the marriage was genuine or whether the family could support itself. Both cost a fee, and each added months.

By the third attempt he had engaged an immigration adviser, which he could afford and many people cannot. That application succeeded — twenty-two months after the first, and fourteen months after his mother died.

His daughter, a British citizen from birth, spent those two years watching her father sort papers at the kitchen table.

"What I still can't square," Edward says, "is that nobody ever told me we weren't a real family. They just told me the paperwork was wrong, three times, in three different ways."

Edward now helps BOVF's Japan branch with briefings for other families in the same position. His advice is consistent: start the evidence file years before you think you need it.

Case studies on this site are written from the experiences BOVF members have shared with us and are presented in anonymised form. Names and identifying details have been changed.