The applicationn

We first commenced on our well Li Huang's visa application process at the end of October, 2010. At the beginning we were incredibly naive and thought it would be reasonably simple! boy were we mistaken BIG TIME!!! I did some research on the internet and found a list of requirements.

1. Details of your immigration history in this State
2. Your current legal status
3. Your original marriage certificate
4. Detailed information regarding your relationship history and the context in which your marriage took place
5. Evidence of your current address of your joint habitual residence
6. Your original Passport and Birth certificate
7. Your Irish national spouse’s original passport and birth certificate
8. Other supporting documentation – Photographs
9. Accommodation details: Rent Book, Joint Tenancy Agreement/ Proof of Home Ownership, Utility Bills, Financial Statements, letter from Community Welfare Officer/Social Worker or Tax Credit form from the Revenue Commissioner

After i completed this research we reassessed the situation and realized in hindsight... its not going to be as easy as we thought and it was definitely going to take more time... the website suggested half a year minimum! this absolutely horrified us and also another requirement was that Michael must not work!? and i am in full time college and not working... We didn't know how we would be able to continue living together... resulting in us being unable to apply at all..

So our next step was to visit MRCI Migrant Rights Information Centre. We spent a long and quite stressful day in Dublin trying to get a meeting with them. We thought they may be able to help us... but unfortunately they cater more towards... People with a working visa as opposed to ex students... and our meeting there left us feeling rather shell shocked and more discouraged than we already were... we started to feel so anxious and almost decided to abandon the whole application. According to the person we met we need some sort of sponsor for Li Huang, who could financially support him during the application! who could we ask to do that?? and no Irish social service could support us... basically we don't exist.

Anyway as a result of the meeting we were strongly encouraged to hire a good solicitor. Which we believe we have... so a day later we met the solicitor. Which resulted in us getting yet another list of requirements we need for our application. These were even more difficult than the ones i found before! Altogether there was 11 but some of them had sub parts or included getting numerous items.... We are still struggling through this list.. i don't have the list handy but this is a basic outline. i think I'm forgetting something....

1. Relationship account from both parties.
   
2. Copy of wifes passport
3. Copy of wifes birth certificate
4. copy of marriage certificate
5. A job offer
6. Letter of reference from past landlords
7. Photos
   
8. Character references from friends
9. Character references from people in the community
10. Your passport
11. Your birth certificate
12. Financial statements, utility bills.

The paler green ones are the ones we are still in the process of doing the darker ones are ones we have almost completed... for me the application is like a project or a thesis its slow and takes time.

At the moment were currently working on the financial statement and utility bills. Believe it or not the apartment doesn't have the internet yet and we don't get ESB bills so we actually have no bills so we thought the internet is the best way.. hopefully we will get that organized by the end of January that's our aim. We have a joint account set up so we are going to use that to pay the bill.

Were also busy compiling all our photos and printing them out most of them are on the computer. ultimately the application is just time consuming and expensive.