Hello, we are Edison and Dimitrios. We met over a Facebook game in 2010 and since then we became friends and partners. In 2012 I moved to Colombia and we started living together for four years but in 2016, after my work contract finished, I decided to move to the UK and work there to offer us a better quality of life. On the 31st of May 2018, we tied the knot and thought we could finally live our lives together as a married couple.

So what's the problem? I am an EU citizen, Edison is Colombian.

We had no idea it was so impossible for my married partner to visit the UK, especially since every single EU country does not require a Visa for a simple visit of up to 90 days. In the UK, however, it's practically impossible but we had no fear, we had the law on our side.

So we provided our official and legal marriage certificate, a small representative excerpt of our 12.000 pages of Facebook conversations, another small representative excerpt of our 800 pages Whatsapp conversations, screenshots of our daily phone calls and video calls, pictures of us being together for the last 8 years, proof that I have been sending my partner money since I arrived in the UK to support him, proof that I am working and I am capable of supporting us both as I have been doing for the past 2 years, and attached them all to our Visa application.

With all these overwhelming evidence of a legitimate and long-lasting relationship, we had no doubt that our application would be successful - besides we provided everything the Home Office described on their gov.uk site that we needed to provide and more. (Take a look here:
https://www.gov.uk/family-permit/documents-you-must-provide ->DOCUMENTS YOU MUST PROVIDE: “You must provide: a valid passport evidence of your relationship to your EEA family member, for example a marriage certificate, civil partnership certificate, birth certificate or proof that you’ve lived together for 2 years if unmarried, your family member’s valid passport or national identity card (or a certified copy if you can’t provide the original), proof of your dependency if you’re dependent on your EEA family member”.)

So what happened?

The ECO acknowledged the marriage certificate and all the other information and proof we provided but after demonstrating an unimaginable abuse of power refused the Visa Application on the grounds that "you have failed to submit any photos of your wedding to prove that it took place."

The existence of a marriage certificate ipso facto proves beyond any doubt that the marriage took place. We are not obliged to parade our personal life to satisfy anyone's lack of professionalism, especially since we are not asked by law to do so.

Help stop the misuse of the power of the ECO.

This petition is about everyone. We need to protect ourselves from people who do not follow the letter of the law but instead seek ridiculous excuses to block Visa Applications!

We demand:

• That the ECO's examine the proof the applicants provide according to the official Home Office site guidelines.
• That they do their job ethically and look into every single case following the letter of the law and do not misuse their power inventing unsubstantiated excuses to deny Visas.
• That they are accountable for every abuse of their power over the Visa Applicants.

 

Help us put an end to this appalling abuse of power and demand that the ECO's do their job by investigating in depth the Visa Applications and the proof that is provided.

Help us stop the separation of families over unsubstantiated excuses that have nothing to do with the law but everything to do with the ECO's lack of interest and apathy.