Visa Requirements For For Western european Voters

By Jon Rose

What Are the EEA Immigration Laws?

The UK's EEA laws are a crucial part of EU law that is often known as the Free Movement Directive (it's also called directive 204/38 you can find a link to it below). In short it is based on the idea that all voters in Europe have the inalienable right to move about freely to find employment or to live in other countries in the EU.

These rules give three main sets of rights. The legal right to visit for you and your family. A right to work or study in a country for you and your family and eventually a right to settle permanently (in The United Kingdom they sometimes call this unfixed leave to stay or ILR) in the country.

I should talk about each in turn.



Visiting the UK under the EEA Rules

The EEA regulations are extremely clear on this. The first is that every ECU citizen has a right to visit any EEA country for at least 3 months without any formalities. You can just arrive at the border and show your passport or identity card and they have to let you in for a visit. They can only refuse in remarkable circumstances like if they believe you represent a risk to security.

The other vital component of this is they also need to let your direct family members in with you, regardless of whether they're not citizens of an EEA country. So in my case, I'm German but lived in England with my South African spouse. Each time we want to travel anywhere in Europe or to Britain they need to give her a visa and they are not allowed to charge her for it. This is really critical as there is technically speaking no other ritual needed. In principle you could step off an aircraft with nothing more than passports and a wedding certificate and get entrance to Britain.

In truth Britain wants the spouses or dependent children of EEA voters to get a visa. In several cases too it is simpler for us to travel around Europe when my wife has a visa. The law says that they cannot demand them, but you try arguing that point with an airline check-in desk which is refusing to let you board the airplane. So it is just far easier all around to get the visa. Now there are a pair to things to notice about this. To get it you've got to present both passports and a wedding certificate. If they have proof that your marriage is bogus then they can say no.

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You can read some more about immigration regulations in the UK by clicking the links. You can find the ECU free movement directive by following this link.