Dependent parents, grandparents, and other relatives

Family reunion is one of the most serious challenges in UK immigration. We regularly assist our clients with bringing their family members to the UK and are proud to achieve 100% success rate in these applications. However, this is never a straight forward matter.

Those who are entitled to consider bringing their parents, grandparents and other dependent relatives to the UK are EEA nationals, British citizens and persons with indefinite leave to remain in the UK.

The rules for EEA nationals are considerably more favourable than those for the British citizens and settled migrants and we therefore thoroughly check our clients' entitlement under the EEA Regulations before we advise them to apply under the immigration rules. 

The immigration rules require that dependent relatives be financially wholly or mainly dependent on the UK-based sponsor.  This means that a significant portion of their daily living needs is to be covered by the funds provided by the sponsor.

Other requirements are that at least one of the parents or grandparents is over the age of 65.  They should either be travelling together or be single, divorced, widowed, or separated. If they are in a relationship with a person not related to the UK based sponsor, the sponsor has to demonstrate willingness and ability to accommodate their spouse or unmarried partner without recourse to public funds.

The sponsored parent or grandparent should have no other relatives in their own country to whom they could turn for financial support.

And the sponsor has to demonstrate that their funds are sufficient to provide for maintenance and accommodation of their dependent relatives in the UK without recourse to public funds.

Other dependant relatives, such as children over the age of 18, brothers, sisters, uncles or aunts, are only entitled to join their UK based sponsor if they are living alone outside the UK in "the most exceptional compassionate circumstances". The same applies for a parent who has not yet reached the age of 65. The term received judicial attention in the Court of Appeal in March 2012.  Please see our news article of 30 March 2012 for more details.

Successful applications result in grant of indefinite leave to enter with an attached condition of no recourse to public funds.  After five years, these conditions are lifted.  The sponsored relative is then permitted to apply for British citizenship. 

We strongly recommend that you seek legal advice before applying for this type of visa. Visas in this category are very expensive, appeals are lengthy (it is not unusual for the out of country appeal process to take nine months and longer), and the chances of refusal of any subsequent applications for a visitor's visa is quite high.