Partnership work visa with almost 12 months living together - Limited Medical Certificate ok?

[Genianoe]

Hi there,

We recently sent our application to London for my husband's work visa (he's Spanish and I am a New Zealander). Today we received an email saying they cannot accept his Limited Medical Certificate as we have not been living together for more than 12 months. The thing is, we are less than 1 month away from meeting the 12-month requirement (we have been living together since 11/06/16 and married for 10 months). Furthermore, we provided a VERY detailed timeline showing all the trips we did together before that, with evidence of flights and hotels we stayed at. If they take those trips into account (34 days physically together), it has definitely more than 12 months! And of course we submitted plenty of evidence to prove that we currently live together at the same address.

I wrote back to the officer with all these dates and information, and I'm really hoping those trips can be taken into account. It would be a huge financial blow for us if we had to redo the medical certificate, and we are also getting quite stressed as we are travelling abroad in late June and we were hoping to have the visa and passport back before then, but now we are having all these delays Can anyone comment from their own experience? Is it likely they will reconsider our application and accept the Limited Medical Certificate? We are really hoping to receive a positive reply from them soon.

[JandM]

Sorry to say what you don't want to hear, but when they say 12 months, they MEAN 12 months.

Partnership requirements

You must be able to show us that you're living together in a genuine and stable relationship before we can grant you a visa based on your partnership.

Living together means sharing the same home as your partner, which doesn’t include:

spending time in each other’s homes while you each maintaining your own home
sharing accommodation while on holiday
flatmate arrangements

.https://www.immigration.govt.nz/new-...on/partnership

[Genianoe]

Hello JandM

Thank you for your quick response, even if it's not good news for us Since we are so close to the 12-month requirement, is there any way they can put the application on hold until then? Will the Limited Medical Certificate be valid then? It would be really silly to have to pay the application fee again, or redo the medical certificate when we are so close. Furthermore, they have also requested a criminal check from his birth country (Colombia), which we might not be able to obtain within the 2-week deadline they have given us. If we ask them for an extension, surely we will reach the 12 months and they should be able to accept the Limited Medical Certificate then. Does it work in this way? Or does it the depend on the date we submitted the application?

[JandM]

No, it doesn't work that way. An application to INZ is a legal document, and by submitting it, you are warranting that everything on it is true. If it's something you expect and intend to be true in a week or a month, that doesn't make it true yet.

There are all kinds of situations where honest intentions don't work out - e.g. someone "will have" 10 years' work experience next week, only the boss calls everyone in this afternoon and says he's very sorry but his company is bankrupt and they're all out of work as of now, or someone is near the end of their university course so they "will" be graduating at the end of term, but they get sick or have an accident and can't take their final exams. This is why INZ will not accept any claim in advance of the facts, and applicants have to meet the regulations as set out on the website and on their forms and guides.

INZ COs have been told by the government to give short deadlines for requirements, in the hope that this will speed up processing. However, in practice, COs know that people can't magically produce immediately documents which have to be applied for, or paperwork which has to come through the mail from overseas, so they are normally flexible if you communicate with them before the deadline, and let them know that you have done what you can and will send what they have asked for as soon as possible.