A pregnant woman of Indian origin from Shillong has been denied entry to live in Scotland with her Fife born husband because her language qualification for entry to the UK is too advanced. 22 year old Alexandria Rintoul, married to Bobby from St Andrews passed an advanced English exam, but not the same required for her visa category- which is much easier to qualify. The Home Office denied her entry and said Alexandria could apply again for the £2000 visa.
Alexandria, who is looking forward to set up her home with her hubby, is a musician and has an English degree. She sat an International English Language Testing system exam but the Home Office requires an IELTS pass for immigration - not the more advanced one she has.
A Home Office spokeswoman reportedly said: "Some applicants for visas to settle in the UK need to pass an English language test at an approved centre that is specified in the immigration rules."
"Mrs Rintoul failed to do this and also failed to submit the necessary supporting evidence for her application. It is open to her to reapply under the Priority Visa Service."
While they deal with her second application, Mrs Rintoul has been stranded in hotels in Bangalore, hours away from her home in the north east Indian state of Meghalaya.
The couple met when Bobby, who works in the oil and gas industry, spent a year and a half in India. They moved to Dubai before Bobby returned home, hoping to be followed shortly by his wife.
Bobby, 33, told the BBC Scotland news: "We were told the visa process is difficult so we should hire an immigration lawyer to help us, which we did.
"They told Alexandria to do the higher test and we submitted all the evidence requested of us.
"However, we have now received a rejection letter on the basis she has over qualified herself with a more technical test than required.
"It says she should do a lower one so she can be entitled to be here and that she did the higher one unnecessarily.
"They say we can apply again but it costs £2,000 for each application.
"Its just a money making outfit as they could have used some discretion and accepted the higher qualification."
Her allegations come after an outrage earlier this year when the Home Office revealed plans to charge visa applicants to contact their support service. A leading UK newspaper reported that the Home Office is allegedly making profits of up to 800% on some visa applications, and the margins are so lucrative that there is an alleged incentive to reject applications to prompt repeat applications.
When asked for a comment on the inflated visa fees, the home office had said that the high fees were “only right” and argued that the inflated fees are in order to ease the burden on the taxpayer to control the border.
