Administrative Review
Sunday, 09 August 2009 16:14
Appeals and Administrative Review Please note that full right of Appeal is only given against refusals in following UK visa categories now: 1- Family Visit (Close Relatives only) 2- Settlement Visa (Spouse as a Sponsor) All other categories such as Work Permit holder / Tier-1 (HSMP), Visitor (Student-visitor, Medical-visitor, Business-visitor, Academic-visitor) and Student (Tier-4) does not hold the full right of Appeal. However the Applicants refused under student-category are given one chance to file an Administrative Review petition. What is an Administrative Review? An Administrative Review is a right of an Applicant who can file it for a review of his/her Visa Application without any charges (by BHC) if that student feels that he/she has been refused wrongly by the Entry Clearance Officer: the ECO/Visa Officer/Respondent. The only difference is that this type of Petition is: (b): Petition reviewed by the Entry Clearance Manager-ECM regionally at British High Commission (BHC) only once. But in Administrative Review (AR) no such provisions are offered to the student upon the refusal. In fact the irony is that in AR a student refused is only allowed to identify the mistakes of visa officer only once if that student feels the visa-officer has made any error while calculating the 40 points as required to qualify for a student visa to UK. No So the word for advice are: be very very careful while filling out the student-visa application and be sure to attach all the evidences in terms of documentation showing that (a) the applicant is fully authorized to utilize all of his/her sufficiently held funds available at his/her disposal to qualify 10 points allocated to local sponsor and (b) the applicant has a visa-letter (admission-letter) from fully registered and approved education provider (sponsor)/college/university by UKBA in UK to qualify the rest of the 30 points.
Why?: because back before the April 2009 prior to the new Tier-4 point based system was introduced, not only that the full right of Appeal was being given to students refused for their visas, they were also given a chance to fulfill their deficiencies. For example, if a student (Appellant) came along with the objection of English Proficiency from the visa officer then he/she could either take IELTS if he/she has not taken at all to begin with or could re-take the IELTS to achieve his / her score (bandwidth) as required by British Council guidance hence needed to study his/her course in UK and therefore could satisfy the judge at AIT by producing the evidence that his/her deficiencies were met or accomplished as a new / fresh evidence even before the outcome of Appeal or while the Appeal was still in the process of being promulgated or such as sponsor's issue raised by the visa officer that the Appellant has not been able to produced personal bank statement from his sponsor apart from the business bank statement that was already produced by the sponsor. Once the Judge was satisfied the
requirements have been met the Appeal then most of the time was allowed and the visa was granted.
& only then the fresh evidence can be provided to facilitate the Administrative Review. Otherwise if the student still insists he/she must be allowed to produce fresh evidence
in AR, he/she then must file fresh visa application all over again. Bingo: yet another money minting Jackpot for BHC/UKBA/FCO/HMG.
