Image Copyright: Cariska Dicks
On the 11th June 2021 my partner, got his 5 year letter. Almost exactly six months after we arrived in Ireland. It was probably one of the biggest “Ring the Bell” moments in our lives together. I represented almost a year of hard work, endless effort & dogged determination. And, yes, days of crippling doubt…
We only made the decision to move over in July 2020, so time was not on our side. Fortunately, Warren’s brother & sister-in-law were already here, and they pointed us in the direction of the SA2Eire website. What a blessing! We paid the 10 Euros, and it was worth every cent. I am the holder of a British passport as I was born in England. I am blessed that I also have rights to Irish citizenship by the FBR process (I’m still waiting for it to be finalised). Warren, on the other hand, had only his Green Mamba, the SA Passport. Oh, and we aren’t married…. So we had two hurdles to overcome; Brexit deadlines & the arduous EU Treaty route for a De-Facto spouse (EUTR1A).
Note this move happened Pre-Brexit when EU Treaty still applied to British passport holders, things have changed hugely now for British after Brexit 1st Jan 2021. But the info still applies to other EU passport holders in the same way.
Going the EU Treaty route with a British passport pre-Brexit was a relatively straightforward thing. We just needed to get ourselves over to Ireland before 31st December 2020. Oh, and for me to get a job, for us to have a bank account, to have utilities in our name. As long as it was all done before the end of 2020. Yup, can do ????. Thanks to SA2Eire, we had our handy checklists.
Thanks to my nature I had the energy & the organisational skills to do all the prep work before we came over for EU Treaty:
Get really good references from as many employers as possible.
Get mortgage statements that show steady payments.
Get references from previous landlords.
Get character references from upstanding people in my life.
Open up a non-resident account. Put some Rands across into it (and try not to cry over the exchange rate).
Get police clearances.
Write up a family CV for myself and Warren to make ourselves as appealing as possible to potential agents & landlords.
As it turns out, that was the easy part. We arrived 4th December 2020, I got a job and started the 19th December, the day after our quarantine ended. We moved into our new home 21st December, having pre-arranged Sky TV, internet and utilities. Having submitted our initial paperwork to the EU Treaty division on the 6th December, we them bombarded them with all the follow-up paperwork from the 23rd December onwards. We still live in that house, so the months after were easy to prove utilities, revenue payments by me etc.
Being part of a De Facto partnership, though, is the difficult part.
How do you prove without a doubt that you are in fact a romantic couple, not just friends trying to pull an immigration scam? That was the real hard work for us. The treaty rights division has obviously been burned by previous fraudsters, so they scrutinize every little detail. To make life a little more simple for those following the EU Treaty De Facto route, here is what I gathered:
- A screenshot of every social media post in which there were photos of us together, check ins together, where we had tagged each other. Every single one… If like us, you do a lot together and post prolifically, this is both a bonus & a curse. Warren & I travel together frequently, and attend a lot of biker functions together, so we had about 100 double-sided pages of multiple screenshots by the time we were done. Side benefit: as we were going through the posts, it gave us a wonderful trip down memory lane….
- Copies of photos of the two of us together and various stages of our relationship. I change my hairstyle & hair colour frequently, and sadly both of us have gained a little weight since we started our relationship, so it was obvious that these photos were not staged for immigration benefit. I put in ALL the photos; the bad & the good. Immigration don’t care if you’re having a bad-hair, no-makeup kinda day…
- Bank statements
- Medical aid statements
- Utility bills with our shared address to prove we lived together.
- Because we had separate bank accounts, on our bank statements we highlighted the various payments we made for household bills.
- It may feel a little invasive, but trust me: the treaty rights department don’t care that one month may have been very lean, or that another month you were flush with cash… They just care that you shared household expenses...
- I got affidavits, each stamped by a Commissioner of Oaths, where friends, family and work colleagues attested that they knew us as a couple and had shared social moments with us as a couple.
- I wrote a long, detailed “story” of us as a couple. From the moment we met until our decision to immigrate. I wrote it like a love story, with anecdotes and little snippets of love. Yes, I’m part Irish, so I have the “gift of the gab”, but I tried to make it as if I was recounting the story for a friend, not an immigration officer.
- We were extremely blessed in that we had an absolute ace in the hole… Back in 2017 Warren & I did a motorbike roadtrip around the perimeter of South Africa on our bikes. I was asked to write an article about it for the Ridefast magazine, one of the premier motorbike magazines in SA. In it I had made multiple references to Warren as my “hubby”. This was indisputable proof that long before the two-year requirement we were in fact a loving couple.
- Once we got to Ireland, we continued to screenshot social media check ins.
- All our utilities and our banking are in both our names. So we could show that we were still living together as a couple in a romantic relationship.
All told, we had about 400 pages of relationship proof, plus a full copy of the Ridefast magazine, in the envelope we sent to the EU Treaty Rights division. Cost us a fair fortune at An Post, but worth every cent. There was NO way that any reasonable person could doubt that we are a couple married in all ways but the law.
Warren’s 5-year IRP came relatively quickly. (We had been warned it could take up to a year). Hard work paid off in the end… (Oh, and they sent the magazine back to us via registered mail, so they understood the importance of it ????)
P.S. As a side note, Warren and I have decided that after all that we have done & achieved together, we would like to get married…. In Ireland… Another opportunity for hard work & jumping through hoops. But that is another story for another day….
Important links:
#MapMyMove- Our coaching Services - Confused or lost and need some direction, book a session with us to help untangle the confusion and work out your route of immigration
De Facto (unmarried) Partners and Proofs required - If you are an Unmarried couple, what documents to prepare for your move?
This is MUST HAVE paperwork before you leave
Choose the link below that applies to your specific passport combinations for the application process and additional requirements that apply to your partnership:
De Facto Relationships - CSEP & Non EEA
De Facto Relationships - Irish and non EEA
De Facto Relationships - EU & Non EEA
De Facto Relationships - British & Non EEA
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