Road to the UK

-14th July 2021- Malaysian applying for UK Fiance visa

Warning this is a really long post!

This post is to record my journey (a Malaysian) to the UK on a Fiance visa during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020. It was not an easy one especially the virus has made the situation more difficult to apply. 

Disclaimer: This is completely my personal experience, please do not assume every situation and the outcome will be the same as mine.

Online application was made using the UK Visa and Immigration website (the link i used - https://visas-immigration.service.gov.uk/apply-visa-type/appendixfm). PLEASE make sure you are applying the correct visa, mine is the Fiance visa, this is for those who intend to get married in the UK and continue staying in the UK after the marriage. 

After creating an account with the Appendix FM partner form, there is a long form to complete and prepare all the documents needed as indicated throughout the form, there will be a checklist for the documents needed towards the end of the form. 

Here is a list of documents that I provided:
- my passport
- fiance's passport & british citizen cert
- cover letter from fiance, MIL, two of our friends to prove our relationship is genuine
- about three pages of photo grid of me and my fiance with some caption on each photo, ordered by ascending timeline (to prove our relationship again)
- fiance's payslips and bank statements, employment letter, employment contract.
- council tax of the residence that I am going to stay in the UK
- email correspondence with UK registra (booking giving notice) to prove our intention to get married.
- TB test result
- my master cert and transcripts to UKNARIC to prove my English proficiency (so my Master of Economics from University Malaya is granted a CEFR level C1). If you opt for this option - UKNARIC, you will need to provide a letter issued by your university to verify the qualification and English was used in teaching, I find this is actually quite troublesome but it saves you from sitting for an English test. I was lucky that I have a Master cert as my Degree was with UKM which is famous for  Bahasa as the medium of instruction, thus I can't use my Degree to apply for UKNARIC. An extra note, the service I got from UKNARIC is the visas and nationality, I think they changed their name UKNARIC to Ecctis.

So I completed the form and made payment (it was 2031 USD, not cheap yeah) on the 23rd of August, but I couldn't see any available bio appointment with KL Vfs even though they are open, it was due to the lockdown restriction and they don't open many appointments slot in a day. It was frustrating and I had been constantly refresh the link to check for any available time slot. After three days I finally managed to get a slot for 1st of Sept and it was a Premium appointment so I ended up paying about RM700 which includes document scanning service. We were actually planning to get the doc scanning service as we were confused with all the documents categories, and probably we were over-concerned that if we upload the document to the wrong category, it will complicate the process so to ease that concern, we opted for the doc scanning service.

My appointment with KL Vfs was pretty pleasant and smoother than I anticipated. The entire process (biometrics which are the photo and fingerprints + scanning documents) took about an hour.

After the biometric submission, the waiting game begins, I did not go for the priority although it was available since I need some time to prepare my emotion (it was a big decision to move to another country that is far away from your family and where you grow up) and I wanted to spend more time with my family (gosh, I miss them so much now!). 

So my waiting time was around 7 weeks (35 WD) after biometrics submission on the 1st of Sept, the processing time starts from the day you go for the biometrics appointment with Vfs. I received my passport on the 21st of October, 2020.

Alright, when you thought everything settled after getting the passport with the visa vignette, then you are wrong all thanks to the covid pandemic. As Malaysia was still under lockdown (I forgot it was CMCO or RMCO, anyway this is not important), Malaysians who wish to leave the country need to apply for a pass (MTP). For this application, since I have the valid visa to enter the UK and it is a settlement route, I was not worried to get a rejection from it. For this MTP application, I provided my visa, my fiance's visa and a cover letter explaining my situation that I won't be coming to Malaysia in short term. Since there is a start and end date to leave Malaysia, I applied on the 1st of November and I was granted a Yes (exit date 11 Dec 2020 - 11 March 2021) on the 3rd of November, the process only took two days, pretty quick yeah?

Although the UK government does not need a PCR test result from the safe list countries back then, I did my first ever PCR test with Sunway Velocity drive thru test. I guess Malaysia is no longer in the safe list now, I am not sure so do check if a PCR negative result is needed before you board the plane. Also, do complete the passenger locator online form before arriving the UK, this is required by the UK government.

That's all for today! Thanks for reading and sorry for this crappy long post. Hope this will help those who is going to apply for a UK fiance visa.