Foreign and Commonwealth soldiers are facing a unique overseas postings dilemma.
Last year VA fought a long, hard, public battle to change the rules regarding leave to remain. Despite good words, and indeed some positive actions, we see the situation worsening on a daily basis.
Yesterday VA’s operational staff received nine calls for help relating to leave to remain – not from veterans, but from serving soldiers.
There is a lot of confusion among the F&C community and many of the cases are complex. For example, we discovered that F&C families are singularly disadvantaged by overseas postings. It seems that a wife’s time accompanying her husband overseas is not counted towards settlement. This poses some real problems for the Army and families. Can they now refuse a posting overseas? Accompanied overseas service for F&C families is now clearly harmful.
This is an extraordinary situation, and one we put to the UK Borders Agency following an inquiry about accompanied service in Cyprus:
“The current position is time spent accompanying service personnel in a SBA (or just overseas) does not contribute to the 10 year long residence required for settlement and will result in refusals.
I can confirm that we are currently exploring this issue, however. If there is to be a change in policy it is unlikely to happen in the short term so I am afraid the position remains that time spent in a SBA cannot be relied upon in a long residence application.”
VA is to source specialist legal support to deal with these complex legal issues.
