The Long Residence indefinite leave to remain route is for a person who has lived in the UK lawfully and continuously for 10 years or more.
Previously the immigration rules allowed you to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain if you could show you had been in the UK continuously for 14 years – including if some or all of that time was without leave to remain.
The immigration rules now require 20 years’ continuous residence if some or all of that residence was not ‘lawful‘ – because you did not have leave to remain.
The requirements under the 20 year rule are as follows:
The 20 year long residence rule does not lead directly to settlement, but it allows you to enter the 10 year route to settlement. This means if your application is successful using the 20 year rule, you will be granted leave to remain for 2.5 years, and will then need to have four periods of this on the 10 year route before applying for Indefinite Leave to Remain.
‘Continuous residence’ means you have been living in the UK without significant breaks.
You may ‘break’ continuous residence in a number of ways, including:
Time spent in prison cannot be counted towards the 20 years spent in the UK, but does not break the period of continuous residence (you can use the time you spent in the UK before you were in prison, and add it to time spent in the UK after release from prison).
There are ‘suitability’ requirements to meet the criteria for a private life application. This means that the Home Office might refuse your application if the following apply to you:
If any of the above apply to you, it is a good idea to provide additional evidence. This may help in pre-empting a refusal on suitability grounds.
The 20 years long residence rule does include a lot of requirements, and candidates must be informed of all the regulations and exceptions that may disqualify them. Nevertheless, these are not impossible to overcome, and those who follow the guidelines will succeed.
The applications are complicated. As immigration lawyers, we can help you to encounter significant obstacles and prepare the supporting documents.
We are immigration lawyers which are expert in relevant immigration rule to obtain indefinite leave and help you to be successful applicants.
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