Hi all;
Just going through the paperwork trying to get everything sorted for my application, and I've got a few questions that I've not found sufficient explanation for in the guides. This has turned out to be a much longer post than I expected - so my apologies in advance.
(I'm British, being sponsored by my wife in Canada, for the record.)
The first question concerns the Sponsored Spouse/Partner Questionnaire and the Immigrant Document Checklist from the UK-specific instructions: The checklist requests proof of relationship to my wife, and question 9 in the Questionnaire asks for proof of a development of relationship. There seems to be significant overlap here in what they request - do I need to send two copies of everything, one for each form, or would only one copy be sufficient?
The second concern is about the actual proof itself; I'm currently attaching: copies of flight itineraries/tickets/boarding passes (including a few with us sharing a flight); passport stamps for both of us; a small handful of photographs of us both plus family (we're both fairly camera shy, not to mention that often it's just the two of us when we're taking photos - so it's proving very hard to find photos with both of us in a copy of both her and my work visas (she lived here for a year, I lived with her for a year some copies of my pay slips as proof of address for that period; screenshots of the first and last pages of both her and my email accounts showing email contact since we first met; as well as scans of most of the envelopes she's sent me, showing postmarks for dates.
Can you suggest anything else I should attach? Would you recommend including the contents of some of our emails/letters - we'd originally tried to avoid it out of privacy, but if needs be I'll attach anything we're not too embarrassed by. Also, we've favoured VOIP for the longest time, meaning phone records may be few and far between. Would MSN chat logs (although we don't have archives going back that far) be a good thing to print from? Any other suggestions of stuff that I might have overlooked entirely?
Third and, for now, final question is regarding the photographs: Having reread the guidelines I've discovered the photos I have (passport photos - which I'd used for my medical clearance) are very likely going to be rejected (head too big by 5mm... ah, bureaucracy.) Is it acceptable to take the photos yourself, to print onto photo paper, as long as they're the appropriate size? Failing that, never having had to get photos like this before, could anyone recommend a photography chain in the UK that would be suitable?
Apologies for the TL;DR of the post; but I'm really hoping to get this right first time.
Thank you very much in advance for any of your assistance.
Just going through the paperwork trying to get everything sorted for my application, and I've got a few questions that I've not found sufficient explanation for in the guides. This has turned out to be a much longer post than I expected - so my apologies in advance.
(I'm British, being sponsored by my wife in Canada, for the record.)
The first question concerns the Sponsored Spouse/Partner Questionnaire and the Immigrant Document Checklist from the UK-specific instructions: The checklist requests proof of relationship to my wife, and question 9 in the Questionnaire asks for proof of a development of relationship. There seems to be significant overlap here in what they request - do I need to send two copies of everything, one for each form, or would only one copy be sufficient?
The second concern is about the actual proof itself; I'm currently attaching: copies of flight itineraries/tickets/boarding passes (including a few with us sharing a flight); passport stamps for both of us; a small handful of photographs of us both plus family (we're both fairly camera shy, not to mention that often it's just the two of us when we're taking photos - so it's proving very hard to find photos with both of us in a copy of both her and my work visas (she lived here for a year, I lived with her for a year some copies of my pay slips as proof of address for that period; screenshots of the first and last pages of both her and my email accounts showing email contact since we first met; as well as scans of most of the envelopes she's sent me, showing postmarks for dates.
Can you suggest anything else I should attach? Would you recommend including the contents of some of our emails/letters - we'd originally tried to avoid it out of privacy, but if needs be I'll attach anything we're not too embarrassed by. Also, we've favoured VOIP for the longest time, meaning phone records may be few and far between. Would MSN chat logs (although we don't have archives going back that far) be a good thing to print from? Any other suggestions of stuff that I might have overlooked entirely?
Third and, for now, final question is regarding the photographs: Having reread the guidelines I've discovered the photos I have (passport photos - which I'd used for my medical clearance) are very likely going to be rejected (head too big by 5mm... ah, bureaucracy.) Is it acceptable to take the photos yourself, to print onto photo paper, as long as they're the appropriate size? Failing that, never having had to get photos like this before, could anyone recommend a photography chain in the UK that would be suitable?
Apologies for the TL;DR of the post; but I'm really hoping to get this right first time.
Thank you very much in advance for any of your assistance.